This year, a group of students known as Team RHS decided to build a community in which they would create applications to help solve student issues.
Members of Team RHS share the goal of creating apps to make student life easier. According to founder junior Ethan Davis, he currently does most of the programming and decision-making in the group, while the other members of the team test what he creates. The first app he made this year revolves around allowing students to see their classmates which at the moment is not available on Eschool.
“I was waiting for the schedule to be released by the school at the start of this year. Once they released it, I was able to figure out how it was formatted and how to retrieve the information through student accounts. I got it done in an hour,” Davis said.
Team RHS started as a Discord server (a form of communication through voice, video and text chat) back in August 2017.
“It started as something that I had put out there for students to use as an option, but eventually it gained a lot of traction across different grade levels. It was kind of unexpected. I decided to run from that and build Team RHS from there,” Davis said.
Redwood sophomore Evan Halliday, another member of Team RHS, realizes that Team RHS cannot compete with other forms of social media such as Snapchat and Instagram.
“I feel that most students wouldn’t be on our Discord server because not all students have Discord or want to install it because it requires a third party sign up,” Halliday said.
Halliday still sees potential in Team RHS due to the fact that it offers tools other than communication.
“We already have 200 students using our common tool database, and at least 100 students that use Team RHS chat on Discord,” Halliday said.
Other students have pursued similar online platforms to that of Team RHS. Three days after school ended last year, Redwood Senior Elias Deuss began working on what he now calls the Redwood High App. He found certain aspects of the Redwood website complicated and thought that he attempt to make it easier to navigate. This year, Deuss has many goals for the application.
“I want to focus on adding more tools targeted at freshmen or people that have never been to the school, [such as] easier ways to contact teachers or to find classes,” Deuss said. Right now, 190 people use the Redwood High app each day and 250 people have downloaded the app in total.
Deuss says that he wants at least 1000 students using the application by the end of the school year.
Davis and Deuss have discussed coming together to work on the Redwood High App due to the similarities that the Team RHS program and the Redwood High app share. Right now, Team RHS is focusing on updating RHS Chat, an application equivalent to text messaging, which was released Aug. 19. Deuss sees RHS Chat as something that could be useful to the Redwood High App and that he may implement after further discussion with Davis.
Davis and Deuss both believe that combining Team RHS and the Redwood High App will increase user traffic and get more people using their tools.
In the meantime, Redwood students can download the Redwood High App on the Apple App store and the Google Play store. Students can also expect updates from Team RHS and Deuss on potential collaboration between the two in the near future.
