I had one of those events that just suck the time from your day yesterday. You know the type; the visitor that just doesn’t want to leave as they ramble on about their kids and their lives. You strategically position them between you and the clock so that mentally you can figure how much of this you can take before you have to cut them off so that you can make previous a previous commitment.
Then, when they break into tears, even the most hardcore of us (sounds like I’m tough but not really) have to show a little compassion and I mentally start to make excuses to the next appointment so that I can save a little face. So, finally this all ends and I’m in a rush to make the next appointment. I haul my stuff to the car and head out to my destination and then I realize I don’t know the quickest way to get there.
Not a problem, I say, I’ll just pull out Nigel, my trusty GPS, to get there. Whoops. The problem with a GPS is that you have to know the location where you’re headed and where I’m going isn’t in the Points of Interest. Now, I’m mentally really scraping for excuses for getting to my appointment late.
Then, I realized — I have an app for that.
A while back, out of boredom, I had decided to create my own iPhone application. After all, for Computer Science teachers, I think this is currently the ultimate programming environment. My inspiration for this was listening to David Jakes at Symposium 2009 when he asked why were’t we teaching students to write their own applications.
I had written a directory of all of our school locations and hooked into Google Maps and the telephone numbers, internal and external just to see if I could write something. One of my superintendents had caught me playing with it and immediately asked for a copy and then some enhancements to it. Sigh. No good deed goes unpunished, as they say. I had just considered it a useless little attempt to see if I could actually do the Jakes challenge.
All of these thought processes had happened as I’m trying to get out of the parking lot! So, I load the app and a tap later and I’m looking at the Google Map complete with directions about how to get where I’m going. As a non-Windsorite, I tend to travel the major routes but like any city, there are these magic streets that get you where you want to go and typically it starts with just a turn into an alley.
I must remember to give a vote of thanks to the administrative assistants who keep the school addresses up to date. In this instance, I just choose the maps option above, then I tap the name of the school from the directory of maps and voila there’s my map and driving instructions.
I turned out to be just a couple of minutes late for my appointment but geographically challenged, it could have been a lot worse. Thanks to all of the computer science teachers that I ever had!
