High school student Arman Dezfuli-Arjomandi launches the Falco Initiative's official Friends Select event in front of the student body. Photo credit: Tina Dougherty
At Friends Select School, two ambitious high school computer science students have cut their teeth with a real-world application that has led to a fledgling business and a promising future in app development.
The two students, Arman Dezfuli-Arjomandi and Haydn Dufrene, have created the second version of a useful, sharp-looking iPhone application for fellow students to track theirs’ and teacher’s schedules at the private Quaker school in Center City.
The school is based on a six-day schedule that rotates each day, so it’s an easy way for a student to find out where he or she is supposed to be. When a student is ready to add an assignment to their homework list, the app automatically detects which class they are in and categorizes it. Students can even tap into iSepta within the app to find out Regional Rail schedules.
The first iteration of the app, which the two students launched last year while taking Friends Select Director of Technology Jim Brubaker’s object-oriented programming class, had basic scheduling integration, and really started as a chance for the two students to get their feet wet with the iPhone’s native programming language.
“We had to come up with something to build to get class credit, so we thought, ‘wouldn’t it be the coolest thing if we could build an app for the school,’” says senior Arman Dezfuli-Arjomandi, who worked with Friends Select graduate Dufrene on the application.
The students built the application on top of the administration’s scheduling and resource management software, provided by Blackbaud, a nonprofit software provider. By exporting the data in CSV format, which contained schedules and student and teacher listings, the students were able to import that data into Cocoa to design the iPhone app.
“It was pretty exciting to have developers from our student body provide a useful app for students. They’ll be able to immediately see where a teacher is and find out when a teacher is available,” Brubaker says.
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