Scholar Cat

Scholar Cat aims to provide high school students with opportunities and extra curricular activities to improve their overall portfolios.

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Inspiration 💡

I've recently been looking for internships and volunteer opportunities. Especially since I'm a high school student with not a lot of knowledge of programming languages and softwares used in computer science, finding an internship in STEM, specifically technology, with requirements that fit my skill set has been a challenge. The idea of creating a website to help other students facing the same problem has crossed my mind many times and although there is not actual content on this website that students can use, the cute cats and images are placeholders for when I find actual opportunities and partnerships in the future.

What it does 💻

The goal of Scholar Cat is to provide opportunities for high school students specifically for jobs, internships, and volunteering. The big picture was to implement a login function for students to create and access their account, fill in their information and apply to real opportunities. There's also a map for students interested in applying to opportunities based on their location because sometimes, people more comfortable with doing work in person or are open to any locations for remote work.

How I built it 🔨

I built this site using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and echoAR. I planned to finish certain parts of the website given a certain time frame so I finished the foundation, basic placement of the elements, functions such as hover affect, and more by the end of the first day. On the second day, I cleaned up my code by making it more readable as well as fixed up spacing and colours. I spent a lot of time trying to get the filter function to work with JavaScript and experimented with echoAR.

Challenges I ran into 🕛

The biggest challenge I ran into was creating additional functions with JavaScript. Stuff like the filter function and login function which I wasn't able to create required JavaScript. I'm quite new to JavaScript. I know extremely basic stuff such as creating variables, however, I'm not very familiar with using JavaScript to create a website on my own. I also have knowledge of Java so that definitely helped. I managed to create a mostly functioning filter on the opportunities page after like ...3-4 hours. I also spent a lot of time trying to implement Firebase and watching tutorials but I was seeing a lot of JavaScript that I didn’t understand.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of 🏆

This is my first solo hackathon project so I'm proud I actually completed it. Another big achievement is using JavaScript. This was the first time I actually did something with Javascript on my own without watching a tutorial so even though I was mostly guessing along the way and the file is probably coded extremely inefficiently, it works for the most part. I've also been doing web development for less than 2 months and only started self teaching myself it since the last week of winter break (when I realized I needed to get my life together), so I'm quite proud looking at how far I've come. One more thing I'm proud of is using echoAR. The first time I heard of echoAR, I thought it was this completely foreign software that required me to learn some new language so I didn't even bother to look into it. However after attending the echoAR workshop, I realized that I didn't need to learn a new language and that it was actually pretty simple, with some research.

What I learned 🧠

I definitely learned how to use JavaScript, or rather, more comfortable with using it. Before this project, I didn't even know where to start with using JavaScript on a website so I'm happy that I was able to use it. I also learned how to use echoAR. I think the concept is pretty cool, maybe when I have more time, I'll figure out how to turn 2D images into 3D and play around with the software. I also learned a bit about Firebase. I've never used the software before but after checking it out and trying to use it for this project, I'm more familiar with it and what additional functions it can add to a website.

What's next for Scholar Cat 🚀

First thing I would like to complete is the login function with Firebase. I'm sure I'll be able to add it with further experimenting, however, I only had a set amount of time to complete this project. I would also aim to find a way to create a functioning contact form. Another thing that would be pretty cool that I think is doable with JavaScript is custom welcome messages for when the user logs in. For the echoAR objects, I wanted to create one myself, but I realized 2D images don't look so good in AR. I tried to turn the image into 3D but I wasn't able to so as a next step, I would figure out how to turn images into 3D and make it animated or as a .gif if possible. I'm thinking really far into the future but also creating Scholar Cat 2.0 for education specifically would be pretty neat. Although students can learn a lot from jobs, internships, and volunteering, having another version directed towards academics would be nice, and of course, find actual opportunities and partnerships to add to Scholar Cat 1.0.

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