Does your school have an app?

[rush_tech]

I've been asked to look at the possibility of an app for our school. Nothing to fancy, calendar a few news articles and maybe push notifications.

Does anyone have anything similar? Which company have you used? or have you made it yourself?

 

Thanks

[hardtailstar]

Not yet, im working on it.

 

Currently using Android Studio to create it.

[bushby]

looking in to it here starting on win 8.1 as its across all the win 8.1 platforms then ios followed by android

[Garacesh]

Curious: If they're not retailing a product or service, I find that most 'company' or 'establishment' apps just mirror the website and are a wee bit pointless. What're you doing to combat that?

[mavis_go_long]

Currently exploring the idea. Experimenting on xCode.

[kinster]

I've done a few apps for grass roots football in my spare time

[Roberto]

If someone asked for that then I would ask them to think very carefully about what problem they were trying to solve with this app and the benefits of that vs. the ongoing support burden that an app could generate.

 

If the app ends up just being an echo of data that's already available on the website then what is the point? And if people can't get to their email/calendar from the website, alongside dynamically updated news items via a twitter or RSS feed then why is your website from 15 years ago?

 

I would suggest that simply making the website easier to use on mobile phones and tablets is probably less work than writing one app for one platform, yet would give you the benefit of being available to all kinds of users on all kinds of devices and won't require you to test and deploy app updates every time Apple, Google or Microsoft update an OS widget or two.

Edited May 9, 2014 by Roberto

[kinster]

If someone asked for that then I would ask them to think very carefully about what problem they were trying to solve with this app and the benefits of that vs. the ongoing support burden that an app could generate.

 

If the app ends up just being an echo of data that's already available on the website then what is the point? And if people can't get to their email/calendar from the website, alongside dynamically updated news items via a twitter or RSS feed then why is your website from 15 years ago?

 

I would suggest that simply making the website easier to use on mobile phones and tablets is probably less work than writing one app for one platform, yet would give you the benefit of being available to all kinds of users on all kinds of devices and won't require you to test and deploy app updates every time Apple, Google or Microsoft update an OS widget or two.

 

If it was just a mirror of the Website, it's best to make the current Website Responsive. How Important Is Responsive Design?|John Rampton

[localzuk]

Curious: If they're not retailing a product or service, I find that most 'company' or 'establishment' apps just mirror the website and are a wee bit pointless. What're you doing to combat that?

 

Indeed. Editing your website so that it scales properly to work on different devices would be a better option IMO. (I say this, even though ours doesn't, but then I don't have that sort of input into the site any more... Hence some of our pages being, wait for it, embedded PDF files *shudder*).

[pete]

^ That.

 

Don't do this:

 

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/app.png

[machin05]

The only advantage I can see would be utilising push notifications for important messages re school closures etc.

[localzuk]

The only advantage I can see would be utilising push notifications for important messages re school closures etc.

 

Create a Twitter account for that? Or make your news feed an RSS feed? No need for a site to implement anything special for notifications.

[machin05]

Create a Twitter account for that? Or make your news feed an RSS feed? No need for a site to implement anything special for notifications.

 

Not all parents will have twitter accounts or an RSS reader installed on their phone nor would those methods push notifications/alerts. A school app is a handy way to enable this type of communication.

[kinster]

Not all parents will have twitter accounts or an RSS reader installed on their phone nor would those methods push notifications/alerts. A school app is a handy way to enable this type of communication.

 

Add a twitter feed widget onto the schools website.

[Roberto]

Not all parents will have twitter accounts or an RSS reader installed on their phone nor would those methods push notifications/alerts. A school app is a handy way to enable this type of communication.

 

The sort of people who don't use twitter or RSS would probably rather you sent them an email anyway, I would have thought.

[machin05]

Add a twitter feed widget onto the schools website.

 

That's not really addressing the point I made!

 

The sort of people who don't use twitter or RSS would probably rather you sent them an email anyway, I would have thought.

 

Weird assumption to make, but hey if it supports your viewpoint then why let that worry you

 

Twitter apps don't use push notifications unless someone mentions you in a tweet or sends you a DM, AFAIK. So it's fairly irrelevant whether you site has a twitter feed or widget anyway. My only point was that having a school app installed on your phone would enable said school to alert you with a push notification - that's all.

[SYNACK]

Unless it supports all phone types you are excluding people, why reinvent the wheel then the car, use twitter and facebook for notification and a proper mobile site for the rest. This is a solution looking for a problem rather than the other way round. Edited May 9, 2014 by SYNACK

[Arthur]

Not all parents will have twitter accounts or an RSS reader installed on their phone nor would those methods push notifications/alerts. A school app is a handy way to enable this type of communication.

Couldn't you just tell parents to use ifttt.com if they want alerts? e.g.

 

 

Edited May 9, 2014 by Arthur