New MU Trivia App Created by Student

When was Millersville University founded? The answer is 1855.

Millersville University student and computer science major Alex Reardon built an app that is all about MU history. Reardon developed this app using the skills he learned in his Mobile Applications (CSCI 419) course, with assistance from Dr. Roger Webster, professor of computer science.

Reardon has worked on apps before but this was his first that is available in the Google Play store. He started making the app in Webster’s CSCI 419 course and it took him a little over a year to complete. Reardon was inspired to create this app about the history of MU because of his interest in history.

“While I’m not a history major, I believe that everyone can find an interest in history. Particularly, if that history is about the campus that students are attending,” Reardon said.

This experience helped Reardon to learn things that he hadn’t learned in the classroom. He faced some challenges like fixing bugs that existed in the program and learning new skills.

“My advice [to other computer science students] would be to take the Mobile Applications course offered at Millersville in addition to looking around the web and start thinking about what kinds of apps they want to design,” said Reardon. “Mobile application programming is a field that changes very rapidly with a very broad range of cool and useful things that you can do.”

Reardon hopes to continue working with mobile apps after graduation.

The Millersville University Trivia App is free and available for Android on Google Play at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=acreardon.apps.twentyfifteen.millersvilleuniversitytriviaapp2.  The iPhone version will be coming in the next month or two.

Meanwhile, Webster has two independent study students writing an app for Dr. Chris Hardy in biology.  Hardy is the director and Webster is serving as technical assistance.  The two students, Ben Porter and Brandon Jablonski, are writing the android app and the iPhone app for Hardy’s www.natureatlas.org web site to take pictures of wildlife, plants etc and to submit the various biological data to the website data base.