Sharether

All About Sharether

Idea

As there is a saying that, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with just a step, so is the ideation and creation of this site. It all started in January 2022, when I was offered admission to Foso College of Education to study Performing Arts in Primary Education. With my very interest in IT and Mathematics, I planned to switch my course to Mathematics and ICT, immediately I found out that combination. But I was on several attempts denied on the switching of the course officially. So I decided to be disobedient and switch the course myself. I then joined the course, bought books, took lectures and even took all my Mid-Sem Quizzes with Mathematics and ICT students. I thought that was all, until about a few weeks to examination, I was forced out with the index number processes for examination. At this point, I had two options, either to dropout or come back to my orignal offered course. I went back.

Now that I am far behind studies in my original course due to my disobedience, I had to get books fast and catch up. It became difficult to get books to buy at that time of the semester. So the only options I had was to get soft copies of books and past questions, learning resources in PDFs or borrow books from colleagues to study and prepare for the soon to write examination. At that moment I was trying very hard to get learning resources to study, that I had this idea of how feasible, convenient and simple it will be if there was a website where you can go to download whatever resource you need for your studies. So through this experience, I got the idea. And now, sharether was born.

Development

After the idea has been discovered, I layed it aside and followed up the struggle to get some few resources and past questions to dive my head through to gear up for the examination. By the grace of God, I wrote the exams comfortably and vacated to the house. It was at home that I took the idea, researched on it, planned and structured a flow chart of how the site should work and began its development. At the time, I had PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS and a little JavaScript at my finger tips already. So all I needed was the determination and persistency to do the work.

It was a very complicated project to single-handedly do. But I furiously began by setting up my development environment on a desktop computer and the programming of the site started. Getting a local web server to run my PHP code, building up the site's structure, styling it up and categorizing the courses under their repective level and semester. Day and night I was on the site putting things together. After about two months, school reopened and I had to get to campus. But the site wasn't ready yet. And I didn't have a laptop then. So I was wondering how I will continue the development of the site when I come to campus. Then, I thought of just getting the site's project to a drive, and thinking to get a colleague's machine and complete the site's development on campus. And to my luck, I did got a machine to continue.

On campus, I started talking to people for help with the courses and more data for the development. But due to academic work, much time and attention was not given the development. Then vacation came and the development had to be continued at home again. After about a month or two on my desktop computer at home, the site was ready to be deployed. This is the development of Sharether.

Deployment

Now the site was ready. But I needed a name. Initially, "Foscoshare" was the name chosen for the site, but with some talks and consulting, I had to change the name. After a long search, I then took the motto of the site, "Let's share and learn together", and generated from it "Sharether". The blend of Share and together. Now the name problem was solved, but how can I get it out there for everyone to access and benefit from it? There was no way but to host it on the internet.

With little money, I quickly talked to close friends and siblings to raise more money to purchase the domain name and rent server space to host the site. After about two weeks, on the 7th of February, 2023, the site was live. I got the url, sharether.com, and shared it to all the whatsapp platforms I have joined in school. And then sharether was out there. Anyone can use it to find course notes, course outlines, past quizzes and exams questions, etc.

During this time, sharether only contained the content for Fosco. Then, we started getting calls and requests from students from other colleges that we should add their courses so they can also get access to learning resources. At this moment, I realized the need for the access of the site in all colleges. So I planned on extending the software architecture to add more colleges.

Things became very difficult and more stressful as the site grew. There, I sort out for help and realized people really wanted to help. We joined together as a team and here we are. That's when Sharether Development Team came into existence.

Now & Future

And now, with the help of the development team, we have updated and expanded the site's architecture to contain all the colleges affilliated to UCC. Our goal is to gather all our learning resources at one place and give access to all students so we can all learn together. The files are arranged under their respective courses in accordance to their respective programs, to their respective semesters, to their respective levels. These means that the courses for every program has been aligned perfectly under them for smooth usage and easy accessibility of the files.

We have noticed that, about the thousands of students who visit the site just come for files. But there are other uses and benefits from sharether as well. Here are a few key uses of the site, aside getting files.

You can:

view all the courses you will be taking for every semester at every level.
get codes and credits of courses and the groups taking a particular course with you.
get curriculum materials and teacher's accessories like GES New Curriculum for all subjects, Teachers Resource Packs and the National Teachers Standard. (Go to page)

You can also access educative articles like:

knowing where and how to register your courses. (Go to Page)
knowing how to check your examination results. (Go to Page)
knowing the meaning of GPA and CGPA, and how they are calculated. (Go to page)

Now, about 1,475 files have uploaded for students to help us in our learning. People think students follow past questions because they may be repeated. But no, past questions serve as assessment tools and test items to help us know our strengths and weaknesses, and to know the standards of knowledge and competencies expected of us to acquire. And these test questions help us to not be caught of guard.

And also with the interactive learning section being effectively developed, together, we are building sharether into a learning tool to assist college students in their studies and make learning more interesting and fun. And now my friends, you are all welcome to the mission and vision of Sharether. Let's share and learn together. Thank you.