CS students in the course "Project in Advanced Programming" held a project fair in Software Engineering on Monday, January 20, 2014, at CS Taub. The fair exhibited new applications designed to facilitate daily chores.

The students, in teams and in full collaboration, developed "Coolie" - the Technion new generation portal (Android application). The application is far from completion but the feedback from the alpha users is very positive. We are looking forward to improve:

AssignMentor
AsignMentor is an app designed to help the student to manage his tasks. It automatically collects all the assignments that are due, presents them on easy to manage display, and let the user the ability to add any more additional tasks.
The basic app display is a list. Possibly and if the time allows, it will be possible to present all the tasks on calendar as well.
The app provides the user with different helpful services:
· Sorting the assignments and tasks in different scales: due dates, importance (can be determined for each task), difficulty (can be determined for each task) and progress (can be set for each task).
· Set a reminder for a specific task.
· Mark a task as done, or to sweep it out (reversible actions).
Further-more, it shows the progress that had been done by the student in order to motivate him.

Server & Infrastructure
Our module provides the following:
· Connectivity to the internet and some external APIs (such as Facebook and google services). Access to content required login will be given to specific sites (mainly technion’s sites, such as the grades system).
· Database Interface.
· Defining of uniformic styles that will be used in all other modules.
· Main GUI menu that navigates to all other modules.

LetMeIn
LetMeIn is an Android application which enables an easy access for the Technion’s car entrance approval system. While designing the application, we focused our attention on the following matters:
· A better use of the mobile and tablet screen, with a minimalistic yet complete interface.
· Allowing “on the go” access, and performing live checking of the user’s input.
· A more “social oriented” interface. The main assumption is that the user usually invites his friends or his family, rather than strangers.

JoinIn
“Join-In” is designed to enable students to create, view and join open events and group activities on campus. Viewing event details will enable the user to view a list of all other participants.

The events are divided into a five main categories: Study groups, Social events, Sports events, Carpool and Food ordering. (more categories might be added during work). Each user may choose to filter out some of the categories.

If time allow we would like to add map and calendar integration for the place and time of the events and adding the “Tachion” ( project 8 ).

Parkion
ParkInTech is built to provide the driver the most current information from the field. The application collects the information automatically without having the driver do anything and then analyzes it to find the optimal parking lot for the driver.

The research part of the project is to define a model of a parking lot, and raise a theory on how to detect if a parking lot is full or not. The model will use static data about the parking lot (such as size, and location in the campus) and information collected from the users. From this research we will implement the algorithm.

First iteration:
The application will use the Google GeoLocation data to overcome the cases in which the users’ GPS is turned off.

For maximizing the data reliability, the application will use the data received from the device accelerometer to determine how the user is moving - whether by foot or by a car.

The information about the parking slot availability will be presented in two ways:
1) As a notification as part of the Android notification bar in case the user arrived to the campus by driving a car.
2) As a GUI using a map in case the user entered the application.
The plan for the second iteration:

The user will be able to set his current parking permission color as well as his favorite parking location which will be used by the application to show/notify the user only the relevant information.

StudyBuddy
Study buddy is an app designed to assist a student to keep up with his course-load, actively monitoring his progress according to his study plan, and to positively motivate him to advance in his studies in time for the semester end / exam.

The app tracks a student’s advances in a course using one or more specified resources (lectures, tutorials, video-lectures, book chapters, syllabus topics or even problem sets and prior exams). The student decides the resources on his own, and our software is indifferent to the type of resource.

The basic app flow is displaying progress in course materials, and allowing the student to mark new study-topics / lectures as completed. This updates the display of study progress.

If time allows, we would like to explore crowdsourcing of course and syllabus data via shared server, to allow students to rely on pre-made data on available courses.

Hopefully, in the second iteration we will have time to explore methods for motivating the student, such as:
· Suggest a study plan before exam, according to days available
· Linking study tasks to calendar events
· Reminders to motivate the student and verify completion or rescheduling

And we studyBodyDBhope to implement one of methods from this list.

Future projects should explore the issue of motivation further, exploring various gamification methods to motivate and engage the students - both personal (such as achievements and awards) - and group comparative achivements (rankings, ladders, ‘races’ etc).

TechLibrary
The “TechLibrary” application enables an easy access to your library services. Managing loans, finding books, sharing them, and setting custom reminders, making it easier to adjust to your preferred interaction with the library services.

1) Search books:
· Sorting the results of searching accordingly with priorities by recommendation for relevant courses, and from preferable libraries (most visited library or most close one).
· Showing book’s details and copies information.
· Adding to wish list for future reference - when searching the book on shelf.

2) Library card:
· Showing loans and requests details.
3) Opening hours:
· Showing libraries details, such as opening hours, and contact information. Also features navigation for unfamiliar libraries.
4) Reminders and alerts:
· Adding, removing and controlling frequencies of reminders for many actions, such as books due dates, books pick ups and more. Reminders can be triggered by time and/or location.

TechMind
The application will reward the student social activism via Technion groups on Facebook, by converting his different Facebook activities to “Tachion”, the virtual Tech
nion money.

The “Tachion”, earned by the students will be deposited in the “Technion Bank”, and can be used for trading amongst fellow peers, and purchasing benefits across campus.

The “Tachion” mining algorithm evaluates each user action into various amounts of profit, according to its contribution to other students in education, social life and extracurricular activities.

A user action will be considered one of the following: writing posts, uploading files and photos, “liking” or commenting on other posts. Moreover, each like or comment a user receive on his own post increases his revenue, while classifying the post in a higher popularity and beneficial ranking.

The application constructs a class hierarchy system, defined by the amount of money one holds, allowing the user to monitor his progress through the different levels and titles. In addition, a notification center helps the user stay informed of his current “Tachion” balance periodically, according to the user’s preferences.

TechTrade:
TechTrade is a trading system designed for students by students. TechTrade will remove the hassle of a normal trade system, by removing the barter element, and real money expanses, by using a new resource, called Techion, an inside Technion virtual money.

TechTrade will make it easy for you to purchase and sell items from and to other students in your area, using Techions.

A simple user interface will allow the user to search, browse, buy and sell items. If time allows, TechTrade will implement a tag system for easier searching.

TeleTech
The application would contain easy access to all the imporant data that the user needs when searching for the relevant staff member.
· Filter your searches by Faculty and Position of the member you are looking for.
· Send mails, call and find out where a faculty member is located.
· Add Favourite contacts to the application’s Favourites menu or add them as a phone contact with the click of a button.

The main idea is to make this app user friendly and easy to work with, so that users would find it easy to find the person that they are looking for and have a nice graphical UI while seaching.

ug, webcourse
UG application will offer the student the following features:
· Grades sheet (including academic average, points gathered until now)
· Course tracker- will enable the student to follow the amount of available position after a limited amount of (hard-to-get) courses he wishes to register to.
· The user can choose for automatic tracking of the courses, or manually request the information.
· Registration to Courses - easy registration directly from the tablet/smartphone
· Browsing all courses
· Exams timetable
· Tuition payment printing

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