Bluebox Education

Inspiration

Bill & I brainstormed the big challenges that prevent students all over the world from access to a quality education. What came to mind immediately is that children around the world, whether it be from a developed/developing country, some students do not have access to a quality education. Even within some states in the US, students are not pushed to get involved academically and they lack the resources to be able to succeed and thrive in the future. For example, in New Mexico, only 1-in-5 eight graders are proficient in reading, writing and math. This is horrendously low; even for a developed country. Developping countries have a huge portion of their population who do not have access to a quality education. In these situations, even children from the lower-middle class are not able to receive a quality education. In India for example, 1/4 of the population is illiterate, even though India's economy is booming and their technological architecture is evolving year by year. Some of these children can have access to the internet, but the closest school to them is more than an hour away. This is where our BlueBox global education initiative comes in.

What it does

BlueBox Education is our solution to the various factors towards why education is inaccesible to students in both developed and developing countries. We gather the world's top free resources in education and format it onto our website so that it can be found all in one place. Whether it be a US student studying for their SAT's, or a African student who wants to revise for their O levels; this website will be a safe and secure space where they are able to learn about any topic they want. The goal is to continously develop content ranging from STEM subjects to Liberal Arts subjects as well. Since our goal is to make this application free, we will be working with governments, municipalities and other organizations to be able to fund all of our initiatives while allowing it to be free to our consumers. A lot of education programs require a monthly/annual subscription, we want our clients to be able to learn for free anywhere in the world. The initial curriculum will consist of English and Math from Grades 1 - 12. We decided to teach Math and English as these are the two fundamental subjects. These subjects can be applied everywhere in the world, and can be used as a basis to learn more complex subjects. . The education will be formatted in Beginner, Medium, or Advanced levels. From there, students can see what level they should start from. Beginner being Grade 1-5, Medium being Grade 6-9 and Advanced being Grade 9-12. To give the students an idea of where they should begin, a diagnostic test would be given to them upon registration. The students will proceed at their own pace; allowing them to learn at their own pace. The app can also be used as extra help for students who go to already crowded schools and are seeking aid.

How we built it

We decided a web-app was better since you can access it across all devices. The application was made using HTML, JS, Ruby, Jekyll, and Bootstrap.

Challenges we ran into

Time constraint. Our team was really held back due to personal matters and our schedules not lining up. In the end, we ended up having less than 12 hours to work on the project itself and ended up excluding some major features.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Grinding through the night to get it finished B)

What we learned

Improved on overall efficiency of web-dev and also knowledge of use of other frameworks and programming techniques.

What's next for BlueBox Education

BlueBox Education may currently be very barebones, but the potential is phenomenal and we believe that with the combination of the Internet's best online free resources in one place, education can be non-confusing and easily accessible everywhere with a connection.

Built With

• css
• html5
• javascript
• jekyll
• ruby