- Reading is very important, most classes require at least a chapter a week
- With the average courseload of 5 classes per semester, this can be a lot
- If you're a slow reader, pressed for time, or just have a lot to read, Reading Rotator is for you ##If you're not a student:
- Reading Rotator can help you free up time while still gaining important knowledge
- If it doesn't free up your time, then you'll read more!
- Makes practicing reading effortless, increasing your proficiency
The human brain is very powerful. More powerful than the pathetic physical capabilities of a mere eye muscle. Believe it or not, your brain can read faster than your eyes can move. So why can reading be so slow sometimes? As a student, I'd like to imagine I'm on 100% battery every time I sit down to read my textbooks but the fact is: I'm not. A full time workload can be exhausting - and keeping up with assigned reading is physically demanding. So what if I didn't even have to move my eyes to read? What if I could just stream words directly into my mind palace? It would technically be less ACP wasted by my body if I didn't have to move my eyes at all. What if reading actually became restful and cathardic? I find I'm not the only one of my peers looking for shortcuts to learning. Students always turn to resources like Chegg or StackOverflow when they need a condensed form of information about the text they probably should have read. If reading and understanding a textbook was just as easy as googleing, there wouldn't be a need for Quizlet. With the goal of improving the condition of studying from a book in mind, we created Reading Rotator.
Like any project, we have ideas for future features. Here are a few:
- high portability: we don't like being limited to html
- Customizable speed setting: not too fast and not too slow
- high compatability: support for more file types like PDF
- timer mode: if you only have an hour...
- play/pause/rewind: current html/js implementation doesn't support this
- import fonts: comic sans
- user background: or more of our fancy Hexels designs
Choosing the correct tech stack was the most time consuming challenge. We wrote a C++11 program to convert large inputs of text to html format as a UNIX style filter that we injected into our static site manually. We decided on a static site using JavaScript on a Jekyll/MarkDown/GitHub pages site that processes into html. The major limitation with a static site is the difficulty to handle user input. Of course, the trade-off was mobile portability, cost-per-month (of 0), and browser ellegance.
Thanks for your consideration -- we've had a wonderful time this weekend:)
- Kevin Yepes - Cyber Criminology student Florida State University
"Making the world a better place- with bees!"
//Did the Jekyll, C++, and some html/JS
- Roberto Duharte - Digital Arts & Sciences student University of Florida
"Striving to create efficient software"
//Did the JS/html, and managed Git repo
- Erick La Paz - Criminal Justice student Florida International University
"Hello World!"
//Did the Hexels design, first dev project!