HandiTrainer | Devpost

Explain your inspiration behind your project?

In our township, the transition from in-person to virtual school was oddly smooth. We already had been using computers in school, doing homework online, and making slideshows instead of posters. However, one thing comes to mind that seems to have been lost in virtual school: writing on paper.

After over a year of writing essays only on keyboards, many students likely write slower and may even feel arm aches as they write. Our project, HandiTrainer, aims to bring students' writing back up to speed.

What does your project do?

HandiTrainer is a website that allows users to gradually build up their writing speed by providing randomly generated paragraphs for them to write that get incrementally longer. If the user successfully completes the text within the allotted time, they can choose to continue at the current level or advance to a higher difficulty. If they do not finish in time, the user has to try again until they do.

How did you create your project?

HandiTrainer was created with plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This makes it OS-independent and installation-free, as well as simplifying development. Its simple design also makes it easy for students of all ages to use.

What is the effect your project will have on students returning to in person school?

We imagine that HandiTrain will have a significant impact on students whose schools plan on having them write essays and other assignments on paper instead of on computers. Having a fast writing speed is a necessity in timed assessments, and HandiTrain focuses specifically on that skill.

What are some challenges you encountered, and how did you overcome them?

One challenge we faced in the development of HandiTrainer was our lack of deep experience in front-end development. For the most part, we were more familiar with languages like Python and Java, but HandiTrainer gave us a head-first dive into web development. For example, we had to learn how to interface with HTML using Javascript. Now, we are much more familiar with the languages of the web.