Expalk - Explain & Talk!

Explain What You Learn

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Inspiration

Have you ever learnt something brand new and been so excited to share it with someone, that you ended up being the source of a lullaby and reason for a great nap? Have you had to share information with disinterested peers that you ended up remembering a mushy concept?

This is our source of inspiration! Having driven away enough people through our excitement to share information we present to you EXPALK! Explain while you talk your heart out to people who share your enthusiasm for that subject and can help you clarify your concepts!

What it does

  • Connects you to people who want to talk about a particular skillset, and want the world to know more about it!
  • Once you sign up, you have 2 options, either be mentored or mentor! The interactions that is, sharing and listening are balanced with the use of tokens. We believe you cannot learn without sharing and listening, hence to encourage everyone on the platform to develop both these skills.
  • It instantly logs you on a call with someone who is either willing to listen (Mentor) or share (Mentee)
  • None of the contact details of either parties is revealed in the process, and therefore maintains your anonymity
  • There are no hard and fast time slots or any prior commitments here to get connected, you can hop on whenever you want to and you'll be connected with someone given they're online too.
  • Scaliblity We have only included Tech Stacks in the skills section for now, but skills and concepts from any domain that you want can included as this platform is not limited to a particular field or industry.

How we built it

  • We built an application as well as a web app to connect our users, so that they can easily hop on a call using either a mobile or website. To connect two users we have used the Agora SDK so that video calls can be connected on either devices and there is no limitation. Mobile can be connected to web and vice-versa. The app is made using AndroidStudio and the web app is using HTML/CSS and Javascript. We have also deployed a server using Flask for the identification of common interests and their connection later on. The data is pushed onto FireBase and the server, website and mobile application all fetch and data from a RTDB.

Challenges we ran into

  • We were definitely not very comfortable with the Agora SDK.This was our first time using it and therefore, that was a huge hurdle that we hopefully crossed with finesse.
  • Next, the backend development and the server deployment using Flask was something very new but it was great process of how we learnt and could actually base off and entire project on it.
  • Being locked up in our houses, our entire team was working remotely, there was definitely some distance due to the virtual nature of it but in the end we were able to collaborate successfully and produce a working project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Most of us are very new to the concept of hackathons and the working remotely for a virtual one was surely a rollercoaster ride but we've managed to come out with something we're all proud of.
  • Learning new technologies and actually implementing them and then integration with others, for a working model was really a huge success!

What we learned

  • Lots of new technologies, definitely the art of debugging since we ran into a new error every time the codes run.
  • Working and collaborating with different types of people to effectively produce a worthwhile project.
  • Going into the specifications we learnt a lot about: Agora SDK Integration of mobile and web apps Use of Firebase and Real Time Databases

What's next for Expalk - Explain & Talk!

We want to include skills and concepts from all domains and not refrain to add features from any industry or fields to make it more scalable so that there no limitation for learning and we all can explore together !!

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