Searching for a school project that will blow away my teachers

Question

Hey guys,

for my ABITUR which is the end exam of highschool in germany I want to do a project with my friend. We are both pretty good at programming (and have our own company) and have about 9 months to finish the project (after school so mostly saturdays and sundays) we want to build something that will blow our teachers away but don't have any idea what would really make them go "wow". We would be able to create that application which you think is a great idea but won't make money any day. The application doesn't have to be used inside of a school.

We are great with creating webapplications with ajax aswell as write a desktop application. The languages we work with most are PHP, SQL, html, css, C#. Python will hopefully follow soon.

Other students at our school (4 years ago) creates a system which gives every school their own server which is called IServ this server allows the students at the school to have an e-mail address, a website and a user so they can access every computer and just have the rights to read stuff and no installing.

In short:

Give me your idea which would be cool. It doesn't have to be profitable so if you have anything share it with us :)

-- Thomaschaaf

_{Edit: Apologies for the edits; Markdown doesn't like these links.}

Answer 1

what are you good at? what are you interested in? start from there.

Answer 2

Teachers are generally impressed with external validation. Thus, you need to come up with a project that either gets a lot of international attention, that generates money, or that gets published in an academic workshop or conference. The latter is particularly important if you're planning to pursue CS education.

The language list you provided seems geared towards web development, rather than core development or IDE plugins...

Answer 3

A decent CMS system could be an interesting project to take on.

Designing a CMS takes a lot of work. There is a lot involved in making a content management system that is easy to use, flexible, and customizable without requiring the user to code anything into the system themselves.

Also, it can be good to try making a CMS system because it will make you appreciate ones that already exist, since that (in my opinion) is one of the key things developers have to learn: It's not what you can write, but what you don't have to write as a result of finding (and using) an existing framework.

Answer 4

Build a three way mashup. One that I am working on right now allows you to define a territory through a clickable interface in Google Maps with boundary data pulled from the US Census and then including statistical data about the selected area. When it is finished you'll be able to click on any city, county or state in the US and get a comprehensive look at the demographics of an area.

Another project that I am doing an assist on is merging Wikipedia, local news RSS feeds and business data.

There's a crap load of free data out there, find a sweet, and relevant, way to merge it all together and you'll look like a superstar to your teacher.

Answer 5

Go for a Web 2.0 site - you'll pick up lots of skills and might just end up creating a job for yourself after school.

Answer 6

If it's "wow" factor that you are looking for then you need to use some gadgets :-) You could do something using the open source Wiimote library, or maybe something multitouch using one of the several multitouch libraries.

Answer 7

The really important part of "Wow" to many users is GUI. Make sure you guys have the nice one :) To add some fun things to your app, You may consider using those Java Script libraries out there that can make cool effects. I recommend jQuery since it's so popular and widely used these days.

In my general opinion, the things that will make them "Wow" should be something around you and them. Make they feel that they have participation and are part of your project. You can also have a look at delicious.com web site. People post lots of great things there maybe they can give you some inspirations.

Answer 8

Make some mashup 3D graphics program... It looks impressive when you begin in 2D, then rotate the camera and boom, 3D. Try out Managed DirectX or manual 3D programming via Bitmap drawing.

• Tutorial 1 - Initializing DirectX using Managed code
• Tutorial 2 - Rendering a triangle in DirectX using Managed code
• Managed DirectX Tutorial Part 1 - The Title Screen
• Managed DirectX Tutorial Part 2 - Samus Running

Answer 9

How about a Wiki engine usable by normal people (i.e. non-programmers)? Something with GUI editing, an easy way to find and insert links, and a useful method of categorizing pages. I've often felt the need for something like that.

Answer 10

Let Max Weber come alive again. Germany is a big country for European standards. Show the diversity in Germany in a map in your browser. Show for instance the difference in movie taste in Germany. Do the people in Eastern Germany like different movies than the people in Bayern? Can you detect a difference between Protestant areas and Roman Catholic areas?

This is approx. the same idea as thaBadDawg has but you can focus on Germany.

Edit: I would focus on popular culture like pop music. I guestimate that studying popular culture is a subject that is often ignored in Germany.

Answer 11

I'd say if you are trying to wow your teachers, then you should try to connect the software to the stuff your teachers care about or work on.

For example, if you built a database of historical election returns, or campaign finance, or votes by legislators, and then built software that allowed you to explore the data and visualize it on a map, that might be likely to wow your history teachers.

If you built software that drew a picture of the Mandelbrot set and then allowed you to zoom in and pan around it and stuff, that would probablly impress your math teachers.

If you want to impress your CS teachers, then write a compiler.

In any case, the point is that the more you can connect the software to the stuff you've learned, the more impressed the school will be.

Answer 12

Ask a few teachers you have respect for what their biggest frustrations are with the current tools they use or what their 'wish-list' is.

If you can build them something that makes their working days better (or that they see making things better for students) that will earn you kudos.

You may well find that the thing they'd like the most is not that hard to do but because no-one asked them it's never got identified and built.

User centred design is abused but that doesn't mean there's not value there.

Answer 13

Impressing the teacher should not be of highest priority. Do something that you like and what you think you can learn most from.

Answer 14

I've already written my answer here. You might want to check out the rest of that question too - lots of good ideas there.

Answer 15

Phone up the IServ guys, and ask them if you can extend their system. Here are a few ideas:

• Make their systems "data aware" (see Web 3.0, specifically "semantic web" and RDF or read up on web services):
  • IServ web sites can talk to each other intelligently (data-sharing, etc)
  • IServ web sites can share data with central bodies, e.g. the body that governs schools in Germany. E.g. All schools can share student exam results for reporting purposes.
• Make IServ open source.

Reasons why the above are good ideas:

• You're extending an existing product
• Collaborating with alumni (teachers like this)
• You're making a school-focused product better (IServ) - teachers and education bodies all over Germany will like this.
• Schools can use this new integrated system to collaborate (ideas, teaching material, etc)
• Possible tie-in with universities

This is a big undertaking, but I'm all for a good education and streamlining the whole school process :-)

Answer 16

Make simple school information system that is open source. It should enable tracking of attendance, scheduling and grades for third world countries that can't afford proprietary solutions. Off course making it Web 2.0 gives extra bonus.

It's very close to all teachers, and helping others is great wow factor by itself.

Answer 17

Here's an idea I had for a web app when I was in high school, but was too busy with other projects to work on it:

Find out what scholarships are available to students in your school. Get the application forms for as many as you can. Write a web app where the student can fill in the necessary information and have it auto-fill the application forms. Some scholarships require different information, so upon initial sign-up, the student should only have to enter basic information that is common to all/most scholarships.

To take this idea a step further, you can create a survey in your web app, sort of like filling out a profile of interests, to recommend scholarships to the student. For example, one of the questions to the student could be whether they play on any sports teams. This should be multiple choice in case they play more than one sport. If the student selects rugby and there is a rugby scholarship available, you can display this in a list of recommended scholarships.