Check out our website! You can find a carpool, in AND out of school.

            

By Livia and Amber 

          Cars produce about 4.6 metric tons of carbon per year. We wanted to help parents reduce amount fossil fuels coming from their cars, so we decided to make a website so that parents can find carpools easier. Because of our limited time and that we didn't spend any money, we had to make a template on a google doc first before moving onto a real site.

          To get inspiration on how to make our website, we looked at the BPC website, so that we could do a similar format. We also did some research and found another carpool website, which we used to find out what a carpool website’s format type is. We then made 3 templates ideas of what we could do: Template 1, Template 2, and Template 3 (final copy). We interviewed teachers and lower school parents, and had them vote on their favorite template. Template 3 (final copy) got the most votes, but that was also the most complicated one, and we knew it would stretch our coding and google docs knowledge/experience. 

          When we started to work, we realized we can’t embed a map onto google docs (embedding a map means to paste a google map image into your document/site, this is used so that users can zoom in and out to find the place they are looking for on your site). We did lots of research for many classes for recommendable website makers and we tried over and over on google docs. We asked teachers, parents, and students for anything they might know on this. On the Maker Fair day, we were exploring and researching when we found google website maker, we very glad we kept searching. We learned that there are not always going to be ways to fulfill everyone's needs, but also learned that we shouldn’t give up straight away, we should keep looking until we figure something out.

          Though we did not get the fully functional, perfect website we had been hoping to make, we have a good start and learned a lot. We learned about how to format websites, and we learned many new ways to use google docs. We found out that there is another website that was made earlier this year by a BPC parent, and we are hoping to work with her and combine our ideas to make an even better website over the summer. For other people looking to do something similar, our advice would be to interview parents and teachers before doing any work, and we try to find someone who has experience making websites that can teach you a little bit about the process.