Web Site Ideas

Tools for Students and Instructors

Scheduler

Students can create accounts where they put in their schedules of classes and other obligations. Users (both instructors and students) can mark free periods on scale of 0-5 in terms of whether that is a good time for meetings (group meetings, appointments with professors, etc.)
Students and Faculty can import schedule information directly from UD web resources such as SIS+ by "copy and paste" on screen. Or, input course numbers, sections, and semester, and use screen scraping to get the schedule info.
Users can create groups such as "my study group", "CISC474", etc, and invite other users to join the group. Schedules are shared among users in the same group.
Schedule items are either public or private... private items show up with only "busy" and start and end time---public items show also information such as "course num, section, room num".
Invitations to events can be created, sent, accepted or rejected. Users can "remove" themselves from invited events.
Extension: allow "double scheduling", e.g. when two events overlap. Find a way to represent this on the schedule display.
Extension: instead of a single weekly schedule, have a "repeating" schedule for the semester (with a start and end date), and also have a calendar with actual dates. Overlay the two when computing schedules. Also, allow "exceptions" for university holidays, cancelled classes, etc.
Scheduler can compute a "schedule" showing for each block of time, how many users from a particular group are available. Group members can be noted as "essential", "nice to have", or "not needed" for a particular event. An event can then be scheduled as "proposed" for the users that are available... an invitations Once one or more time slots are chosen, a second schedule can be computed that includes only the "essential" users, plus the "nice to have" users that were NOT available during one or more of the time slots. Allow a third schedule and so on, until "all users are covered". (Use case: scheduling review sessions.)
Extension to previous item: Instead of the user creating the event choosing who is "nice to have" or "not needed", allow an event type to be "advertised" to a group of users before it is scheduled, so users can "opt in" or "opt out"... then instead of "essential", "nice to have" and "not needed", you have "essential", "opt-in", "unknown", included separately in counts of available users--opt out is treated the same as "not needed".

PDF Academic Calendar Parser Converter

Isn't it annoying that UD now posts its academic calendars only in PDF format? And wouldn't it be nice if you could somehow convert that format into a honest to goodness calendar form and then edit it by adding your own events?

Project Idea:

Input the URL of a PDF containing a calendar, in the format used by UD
- Example URLs:
  - http://www.udel.edu/registrar/cal/acdcal2004.pdf
  - http://www.udel.edu/registrar/cal/acdcal2005.pdf
  - etc.
Use the Google Cache to get an HTML version of same
- Example URLs:
  - http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:Xk6QPXN1P7IJ:www.udel.edu/registrar/cal/acdcal2005.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
Use the DOM to traverse that HTML file, parse it, and convert to a real calendar format (similar, for example, to the course calendar at):
- http://www.udel.edu/CIS/474/pconrad/06S/info/CISC474.06S.cal.html

Study Helps

Foreign Language Dictionary and Phrase Book

User wants to learn or review a foreign language, say, Spanish.. User can then type in a word in English, for example, "dog". Web site will come back with "dog" used in a sentence (e.g. "This is my dog."). and a picture of a dog (this establishes the "sense" of the word "dog", i.e. a domestic animal, rather than the word "dog" used as a verb, as in "stop dogging me".) The web site will also display the word dog in Spanish, e.g. "perro", and the example sentence in Spanish, e.g. "Esto es mi perro".
In the first version, the administrator interface (protected by an administrator password) would allow updates to the database of words, setences and pictures.
Extension: Extend to more than just English and Spanish. Add a "preferences" screen. User can click on "preferences", and go to a screen where preferences are set. Preferences are stored in a cookie. Allow user to select a primary language for input (store choice in a cookie). Allow user to select "yes" or "no" whether to display words in each other available langauge.
Extension: Add user accounts... if user is logged in, get preferences from the account instead of from the cookie. Also let some user accounts be marked with different roles (administrator, approver, user).
Extension: Add a "trust" model to allow users to update the database (similar to how Wikipedia is maintained) Users can add new words and sentences to the database. New words and sentences need to be approved by an administrator or approver before being displayed to ordinary users (to prevent profanity or sabotage). Set a limit on the number of new words that can be added "pending approval" to avoid large attacks on the database by unscrupulous users. Keep a database of "flagged" accounts that have engaged in abuse. (Investigate how sites like Wikipedia manage problems such as these.)
Extension. Add a "confidence" or "trust" level to words and sentences added by users where users can "flag" errors or dubious translations, or "approve" good words and translations. The level of expertise is established by a "web of trust". (Look this up and describe how it works.)

Google Home Page Modules

Memorizer Helper

A little module that helps if you are trying to memorize something:
- a list (e.g. all the bones in the body, if you are taking an anatomy class),
- a poem
- lines from a play
- a passage from scripture
- a famous speech (Gettysburg Address, "I Have a Dream")
Module presents only one sentence at a time. Each time you visit your Google home page, you see that sentence. You can move up by one sentence, or down by one sentence.
You choose the text as a URL of some XML file that is marked up in a way compatible with helping you memorize.
As an extension, a companion web site might take URL of regular text, and give you an interface to mark it up for you automatically, so you don't have to do it by hand.