After a class tour of the school district’s transportation department, Eden Prairie High School (EPHS) senior Aiden Boudreau realized the after-school activity bus system was confusing – and decided to fix it.
Students had to compare bus route tables to a large map of Eden Prairie to manually find the stop closest to their homes. That often led to students boarding the wrong bus and drivers having to adjust their routes accordingly.
“The activity bus system has been around since, you know, a long, long time ago, and they’ve used this set of maps and charts that used to be in the east entrance of the high school,” said Zach Hanson, a math teacher at EPHS. “I think that’s a little antiquated, and funny enough, kids are having a harder and harder time reading maps these days.”
Boudreau knew there had to be a better way.
The tour of the transportation department was part of the iOS Mobile App Development Capstone at EPHS, part of the school’s Pathways program. Pathways allows students to take a series of courses dedicated to a particular field of study, such as communications and arts, natural and applied sciences, and, in the iOS Capstone course’s case, engineering, technology and manufacturing.
Hanson, who also teaches the App Development Capstone, said a newer addition to the course curriculum brings students to different places in Eden Prairie Schools to identify problems that could be solved with an app.
“A great thing about the iOS Capstone course is that it does a really great job of connecting students with those problems that need to be solved in their community, and giving them the inspiration to tackle that with an app,” Boudreau said.
With this issue in mind, Boudreau decided to create the “EPHS Activity Bus Finder” app. Through the app, users can type in their home address and see which bus they should take, along with walking directions from the bus stop to their house – a far cry from the previous activity bus system.
In total, Boudreau had about three months to develop the app, and he finished it right at the end of this past school year. Upon hearing about the work Boudreau was doing, the EP Schools Transportation Department invited him to present his app at an end-of-year meeting with transportation staff and bus drivers.
“They were obviously well aware of the problem, but they were really, really happy with it, I think,” Boudreau said. “Especially the bus drivers – the few specific bus drivers who were in charge of the activity buses in particular – were very, very happy with it.”
They were so happy, in fact, that the transportation department and Hanson have been working with district administration since last summer to implement Boudreau’s app across Eden Prairie Schools.
So far, iPad kiosks with the app have been installed at Central Middle School, and EPHS is expected to get these iPads in the near future, according to Boudreau.
“The mobile app designed by Aiden provides an easy, accurate, and digital solution for students,” said Bryan Barnhart, the transportation director for the school district, in an email statement. “I look forward to hearing feedback from staff and students in the years ahead, as this tool will save time and reduce confusion.”
Boudreau, who has been interested in coding ever since his dad bought him a cheap ThinkPad laptop when he was in kindergarten, said the prospect of his own work being used across the school district is a “cool feeling,” as most of his previous app projects were merely for fun. Now, with “EPHS Activity Bus Finder” mostly implemented, Boudreau is looking at potential next steps for the app.
“It would be to maybe go on and contact other districts and see if they have a need for this app, see if there’s any need for this app to be even further implemented into the Eden Prairie system, maybe not just the activity buses, but maybe start to use it for the actual bus routes,” Boudreau said. “… Any next steps for the app would be to really expand it beyond what it was, beyond what the initial goal was, and to maybe start contacting other districts.”
