Inspiration
As students ourselves, we understand that different students learn differently, and not one method suits all. Despite this known fact, most teachers still resort to long pieces of texts for the students to absorb. This method, while preferred by some, can often lead to students not catching crucial information. We decided to create Nota to provide an efficient and alternative method of learning.
What it does
Nota is an intelligent note-taking web app that allows its users to focus on learning. On the backend, it uses Python Flask to build the web app, and HTML/CSS/JavaScript were used for styling the web pages. It employs Google Cloud’s Natural Language API to detect which words are worth noting, Firebase to utilize user authentication, and Firestore to store the users’ data.
How we built it
Nota’s backend was built mainly with Python and we used Google Cloud’s Natural Language API in our algorithm to consolidate the inputted information into notes. Our algorithm sends back salience scores that rank the entities in a sentence/paragraph based on the syntax. To connect the frontend website consisting of HTML, CSS, JS and Bootstrap we used the Python Flask framework. We passed information from the website to the Python backend, processed it using our own algorithm, and posted the resulting notes back to the website. We used Firebase authentication and Cloud Firestore to manage users and their data.
Challenges we ran into
We struggled immensely with the Firebase user authentication. Also, it was our team’s first time using a Google Cloud Natural Language API, so that took a very long time to figure out. The time limit was very stressful, but we supported each other in the best ways we could.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
As a team, we were all collectively hackathon rookies, NW being our first 24 hour hackathon. Everyone in our team, although stressed and nervous, worked hard together to solve our problems as a collective group. We had to face many problems we have never faced before, frankly searching the web for answers to questions we’ve never heard of. Nonetheless, we learnt to have fun and spend some time playing pingpong and walking around the avenue to cool off.
What we learned
Throughout this experience, we learnt how to build a web app with Python Flask, as well as how to use CSS and HTML to create an accessible user interface. We also had to learn how to implement Google Cloud Natural Language API, storing data in Firestore and user authentication with Firebase.
What's next for Nota
Although we had a limited amount of time to work on the project, we see a lot of potential for Nota. In the future, we would like to incorporate additional Google Cloud services, such as the Vision API (for photo-to-text conversion), the Video API (video-to-text conversion) and the Speech-to-Text API (audio-to-text conversion).
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