Campfire Apps

I’ve been working for Campfire Apps since December, and the experience has been great. It’s taught me so much about deadlines, scheduling, etc., many things that I’ll need when I get out to the real world.

Working at the Campfire Apps Studio

Working for Campfire Apps has been a lot of fun! It’s a very laid-back environment and everyone on the team works together to finish whatever needs to be done. We’ve spent a lot of time together, working on apps, testing apps, writing blog posts, and much more.

The work must never stop! Working while on vacation in Ocean City.

Throughout this experience, and my APPlied Club experience, I’ve learned a lot about technology, and about myself. I’ve learned that technology can be the key to anything. It can help lead to careers, friendships, and much more.

As a team, we’ve done a lot together. We’ve taken a few trips together to test apps and work on our latest projects. We’ve also participated in a lot of community outreach, such as the Insquared Conference.

Shawn and I waiting to get into the Insquared Conference

And last, but certainly not least, we always make time for fun. Whether we’re out testing Caddy2Go for hours at a time, or having a friendly competition at the go kart track, we always find time to fit fun into our busy schedule.

Riding go karts in Ocean City

This past Saturday Shawn, Stephanie, and I attended the “Insquared: Inclusive Innovation Unconference” at MICA in Baltimore. It was the first “unconference” that any of us had ever attended, and we had a great time! Each of us took away so much from the conference, and we’ve all been talking about it since we left!

We had the opportunity to listen and discuss multiple topics, including youth entrepreneurship and technology in the Baltimore area school systems. Shawn and Stephanie also presented their own session, “An Introduction to Mobile App Development.” They both did a great job presenting, and there were many people interested in the topic.

One of the best parts of the day was hearing from two great keynote speakers. In the morning we heard a talk from Tara Hunt about her own life experiences and how she has never given up to make it to where she is today. In the afternoon we heard from New York Times Bestseller, Baratunde Thurston, about his bestselling book, “How To Be Black“, and a general overview of his life and accomplishments. Both speakers were phenomenal and totally inspiring!

Overall, we were all able to learn a lot from this conference and we can’t wait to experience other conferences like this one!

ETA (from Stephanie): Shawn and I were very honored to be asked to present at this conference. It was an awesome event put on by the Greater Baltimore Tech Council (gbtc) and MICA. Perhaps the most rewarding element was seeing how many students attended the event. We had students from KIPP, Digital Harbor High, and our own Courtney and all of them were well-spoken, involved in the conversations, and inspiring. I know that it would have been difficult for me as a high school student to attend an event such as this and participate in the ways that the students did this past weekend.

We very much look forward to similar events in the future, as Courtney said, we had a great time and took away so many nuggets on knowledge, thought, and inspiration.

For anyone who is interested, Shawn posted the slides from our talk “An Intro to Mobile App Development” on his website, ShawnsBits.com. Please check them out, there are a TON of links to good resources and information contained in the presentation.

While searching through the inter-webs I came across this post and I thought it was very interesting. According to a survey conducted by the Federal Trade Commission apps geared towards children do not fully disclose certain types of data. The consumer protection agency has scrutinized privacy policies and they have  suggested that app developers go back into their apps to make sure that they have disclosers of the data in their app. Young people, teens, and children are the vast majority of people using smart devices such as iPhone and Android. And many of the apps in the App Store are geared for these age groups. However, they’re not always as safe as they seem to be. As a parent, make sure that you’re monitoring what apps your child is downloading and make sure that they’re age appropriate and don’t include or suggest anything that you wouldn’t want your child to see. To read more about this, you can follow the link here to view the whole article.

Are you signed up for the Campfire Apps Newsletter?! If not, you should be! Be the first to find out about new releases and other information! We send out a monthly newsletter to keep you up to date with what we’re doing. The monthly newsletter shares highlights from the blog and updates from what we’re working on. You can sign up to receive the newsletter here. We hope you’ll consider signing up to receive this bonus content from Campfire Apps!

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.

Many parents believe that allowing technology in education won’t benefit their student and will only distract them. However, many teachers and educators disagree with that. Nowadays, you can’t even walk into a classroom without seeing some type of technology being used. The majority of teachers prefer to teach using tools such as laptops and PowerPoint programs because it mixes up the lesson and it’s something that will get students to comprehend the information better. Being a student myself, I can say that technology in the classroom is great. We all look forward to any chance we have of using the computers, and we enjoy not having to just copy down notes everyday. And different from many schools, my school even airs a daily video broadcast of our announcements every morning. I found a video on The Digital Generation Project that focuses on an elementary school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This elementary school is what they refer to as “wired.” They are very tech savvy and encourage technology use through all of their grades, kindergarten through 5th grade. This school is one of the many schools nationwide that are integrating even more technology into their education.

Campfire Apps is working on a new game and we’re looking for testers! All you have to do is fill out a quick survey and you’re set! If you’re a parent you can go to the Families page to get started. We are also looking for teachers to test. If you’re a teacher and you are interested in becoming a tester you can follow this link to the Teachers page. And lastly, we need Kindle Fire Users. You can find out all of the information you need by following the links given. We hope to hear from you soon!