NeverLost app

The mobile application created from students in order to help other children

The application, called Never Lost, was created as a useful tool for all children and answers some questions that a child may have when lost, or found in an emergency situation, such as “Who am I? I’m lost. How can I get help? How can I let my parents know where I am? How can I find out where I am?” The app allows children in trouble or panic to contact their family with just two clicks.

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Overview

Information on this page is provided by the innovator and has not been evaluated by HundrED.

Web presence

2014

Established

-

Children

1

Countries

Updated

December 2017

About the innovation

The Mobile application designed and created by students in order to help children in trouble or panic via calling their parents.

Fifty secondary school students from Corfu, Greece, motivated by the idea of helping children with special needs, worked hard to create an innovative mobile phone application. The app allows children in trouble or panic to contact their family with just two moves.

The application, called NeverLost, was created as a useful tool for all children and answers some questions that a child may have when lost, or found in an emergency situation, such as “Who am I? I’m lost. How can I get help? How can I let my parents know where I am? How can I find out where I am?”

The idea was born at the Amfipagiton middle school, in northern Corfu. However, the students had to work with older students from the high school in Kato Korakiana and the 2nd and 4th high schools of Corfu, since their programming knowledge was limited.

When you open the application, you can see 6 large buttons. The first is ‘Call,’ while the others are ‘Send a message (SMS),’ ‘see your position,’ ‘send your position,’ ‘send a map of your position.’ When the user presses the call button, the phone automatically calls the person’s parents. If the user presses the send message button, it will automatically send a pre-written message that reads: ‘I am lost.’ When in trouble, the user can press the position button and a map will automatically appear at the child’s parents’ phones.

The students were excited to work on the project. They collaborated via Skype and they also visited the other schools along with their teachers. When the application was completed, it was uploaded on the internet and it can be downloaded for free. The application is useful for all children, given that they are using a mobile phone, but even for the elderly.

Media

For any question please visit our website or contact us via email. http://epalkerkyras.com/neverlost/

Neverlost App English Subs

Trailer NeverLost

Implementation steps

First step is to motivate students

The main difficulty of the teachers that designed the project, was the initial stimulus of the children towards working for a common good. The stimulus thought came unexpectedly easily. The students see other children or seniors nearby their homes,finding hard to do some activities that the most of the “normal” people think thatare easy. During the first approach for the project, the students with the use of thebrainstorming technique they came up with the idea of creating a mobile application,in order to help other children with special needs in their need for help.

Introduction to MIT App Inventor

Students were already introduced to the design of two simple applications for mobiles using Android with the use of the software App Inventor. The choice of M.I.T. App Inventor promotes a new era of personal mobile computing in which people are empowered to design, create, and use personally meaningful mobile technology solutions for their daily lives, in endlessly unique situations. App Inventor’s intuitive programming metaphor and incremental development capabilities allow the developer to focus on the logic for programming an app rather than the syntax of the coding language, fostering digital literacy for all. The above-mentioned features made us decide to introduce App Inventor for Computer Science teaching in Secondary Education, with results that surprised even ourselves.

Collaboration between different student ages

The goal of cooperation between different stages of the typical Secondary education was achieved easily due to the need of different ages, programming skills and syllabus. In total 90 students from 4 different schools (1 gymnasium, 2 highschools and 1 vocational school) covering all stages of typical secondary educationin Greece worked as a team.The cooperation of students of the typical education with students of the specialeducation was thought the biggest challenge of all. Since the students in typical school had the idea of helping the kids with special needs at their local special schoolit was the turn of these kids to give the answers that rose from the initial proposal ofthe project. So the students at the gymnasium wrote the questions and the studentsat the special school gave the answers to their teacher. Questions like, if they owna smartphone, if they know how to use it or make simple tasks, if their parents areusing smartphone technology, or what they do on their free time, were answered andgave the necessary stimulus to us all for the completion of this ambitious project.

Students during the implementation of the application faced real problems thatcome up when any project is assigned to a team, and gained valuable experience onhow they should organise the project, the implementation steps and the communicationwith other groups (which were responsible for the remaining pieces of thedevelopment process).

Creation of the code on M.I.T. App Inventor

The logic of App Inventor showed that it pushes the students to understand the essence of programming and logic to solve problems without stress or errors of syntax of the programming language. Throughout the development of the application the students could by using their mobile phones to proceed with direct control ofthe code (blocks) accelerating process of development and implementation of theapplication. The involvement of teachers in the process was minimal with selective interventions as appropriate.

Designing the User Interface U.I.

Their main goal was the simplicity of the application and what was achieved was that the user needs not to make more than two clicks in order to seek for help. In a stressful situation, a child in panic can use the application and call for help without having to search the directory (contacts) or the need to write a message. The design includes five buttons on the home screen,named as: Make a call, Send Message, See your location, Send your location with SMS and Send your location on a map. The naming of the buttons focused on the simplicity and clarity of the available functions

Creation of the Website and Social Media Accounts

Students created social media accounts and were responsible for the promotion of the application in order to be a useful tool for as many children and families as possible. A promotional video was directed and created by the students, a web page for the app was made using CMS wordpressby the students aged 14-17 years at the Vocational School of Kato Korakiana Corfu Greece.

Common Creatives and Publish on Google Play Store

The final part of the project is the publishing of the application at Google play store. The students were introduced to topics as Common Creatives and they learned how to choose the best common creative solution for their project. They also were introduced to the way that they can publish their work on a Google play store account.

Three months later and after the publicity of the local and international media the students translated the application in English and they published a second application available for free for all children globally.