Campfire Apps

As many of you may know from reading our blog, Campfire Apps has been sponsoring a local high school app development club, APPlied Club at Patapsco High School, since October. This project has been so rewarding for us and we have enjoyed every minute of this experience with the teens, the school, and the community.

We are happy to announce that APPlied Club will now have it’s own space on the web, separate from Campfire Apps. This project looks to be growing into something bigger than we anticipated when we started at Patapsco almost six months ago. In the future, we are hoping to spread APPlied Club to more schools, offer some sort of training program for leaders, and offer a summer camp for teens. These are just goals at this point and we aren’t exactly sure what form these ideas will take, but we do know that this has become a project we are interested in investing more into.

For those of you who are interested in APPlied Club news and information, you can find all of that and more at this new site:

www.APPliedClub.org

If you are interested only in Patapsco High’s APPlied Club, you can get all the information about that club on their site:

www.PHS.APPliedClub.org

You may see an update about APPlied Club here on Campfire Apps from time to time, but the majority of information will be shared on those two sites. We don’t want to bombard our customers and friends with information about a club they may not even be interested in, so we decided to separate the two. We hope that some of you have enjoyed the information we have shared about this club and the program and will continue to visit those two new sites to check in on new happenings and information.

The Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts APPlied Club officially has an app in the App Store! The PHS Connect app has been approved by Apple and it’s now available for free in the iTunes App Store here. The students in the APPlied club have worked very hard to release their first app, and we encourage you to take the time to install the app for your device to see the result of their hard work.

Last week the APPlied Club at Patapsco worked on making and filming their own video trailer for the PHS Connect app. The video focuses on the features within the app and provided wonderful humor. Our video features each of the students in the APPlied Club (at least those who were present at last week’s meeting) and was inspired by the Billy Mays type commercials. We all had a great time filming the video and we owe a big Thank You to Connor Mathena for editing the video and putting it all together in the format you see below. We hope you enjoy our first video trailer for PHS Connect!

Patapsco High School’s APPlied Club was featured in one of the most recent Baltimore County Public Schools Education Channel episodes. They shared a little about the progress that the club has made, and gave an inside look on what a typical meeting looks like. The video focuses on the planning process for the PHS Connect app and gives more background information about the club. You can check out the video below. Our segment is shown at 6:45, so make sure you fast forward to it!

As of February 14th, The APPlied Club at Patapsco High School has submitted their first app to Apple! The PHS Connect app is an app that the students in the club created for Patapsco. Within the app you can find out information about the school such as the calendar of events, links to the school’s social pages, and a direct link to the school’s Edline page. The club worked together in order to decide what features would be included in the app. They thought of the things that most students, parents, and faculty would look for, and went from there. It took them lots of work and effort, but the app is finally complete!

Within the app there are specific pages included such as a calendar of events, social links, a link to the school’s Edline, a news feed, an about page, and Patriot Pride which focuses on the recent achievements of the school.

Calendar

Social Links

Patriot Pride

To see the rest of the app you’ll have to wait until it’s released to the app store! We look forward to sharing it with all of you, let’s hope the app is approved on the first try!

The APPlied Club at Patapsco High School has been working very hard on finishing up their first app, and it’s almost complete! Shawn and Connor have been finishing the app’s final touches and getting it ready to be sent to Apple for approval. As a group, the club has been learning the guidelines and steps of pre-marketing. They’ve spent time brainstorming ideas of how they can market the app and get people excited and talking about it. Some of these ideas include making video trailers, posts on social networks, leaking sketches of the app, and word of mouth. They will be submitting the app to Apple for approval within the next few days and then they will begin the marketing process. We are looking forward to sharing the app with all of you! You can keep up with us at http://phs.appliedclub.org/ or here at the Campfire Apps blog.

Last week we were excited to share a big surprise with our APPlied club kids. Campfire Apps purchased 3 Mac Mini computers for the students to use to start storyboarding our school app. They were so thrilled! It was a little like Christmas morning, there were papers and trash all over the floor, and the kids had the computer setup with Shawn’s help before I even realized they were doing it! Shawn showed the kids how to get everything setup with the hardware and software and they immediately got to work on the storyboards for the app. They were very excited that they had something to show at the end of the meeting, 2 screens actually. We can’t wait to work more with the Mini’s and get this app out the door!

We are excited to share that, yet again, we are featured in the local press. This time we are featured in The Dundalk Eagle discussing our APPlied club at Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts. We are very honored to be featured in the paper and are very happy that this is a topic of interest about the school. We are lucky enough to be able to donate our time and effort to the school and give back to the community we are from through this club. We hope that the club will continue to generate interest and gain popularity with the students and staff. If you would like more information about what we are doing with the APPlied club, you can contact us at steph@campfireapps.com with your inquiries.

You can find the article online by following this link: Creativity Goes Mobile

A big thank you to reporter Nicole Rodman for the wonderful article and for taking the time to come visit the club and talk with the students.

As you may have figured out by now, Shawn and I are quite passionate about technology, in general, and mobile technology, specifically. Today we are pleased to announce a new venture we are embarking on called the APPlied group.

This is a club that we are forming at our high school alma mater for current students interested in technology and developing mobile applications. Shawn has been in talks with the principal at our high school, Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts, for quite a while now trying to come up with ideas for ways that we can help them technologically. For example, creating an app for the school, helping them start a technology club, a robotics club, and the list goes on a little longer than that.

In September, we attended the 360iDev Conference in Denver. After a few discussions that took place over the course of that week, I returned home enthusiastic about helping young people learn about possible careers that they can have related to technology and mobile development, particularly young women. Having a 16 year old sister beginning her college search, who is particularly adept at various forms of technology, this hits close to home. I want to find ways to show her (and other girls) how many choices they have when it comes to working in a technology related field.

Once Shawn knew I was on board, we pitched our idea of starting and leading a technology club at PHSCFA to the principal. He loved our idea and agreed to support our new venture. So we set off thinking about the scope of the project and what we wanted to cover with these students. Then, it came across the desk of the principal that the county was to be sponsoring a game development contest called Project LiVE (Learning in Virtual Environments). Needless to say, this was a perfect opportunity for us! It was just in time for us to develop some ideas for content related to app development and to be able to help the students actually develop a game throughout the course of the year.

We are totally excited about this opportunity and meeting some of the students and staff at PHSCFA. We have our first meeting on Monday afternoon and you can definitely expect to hear more about this as we go through the process and work with the students.