StudentCampus app make St. Clair College students “h-appy”

 

By Mandy Matthews

Desks and chairs fill the room as a white glow lights the face of one lone student. The hum of running computer monitors travels through the air, only disrupted by non-sequential clicks of a mouse.

As St. Clair College alumni student, Daniel Nicholson studies in his first year of the graphic design program, he video chats with his friends. Nicholson is happy now, but did not always have this kind of social life.

“It was more at first, just trying the meet people. But, it was me, just trying to say hello,” said Nicholson. “Once I found a group of friends, it was pretty easy.”

Nicholson turned to social media three years ago when he first found himself alone in that room with his computer.

“This app was really built to provide students and alumni, as we move down the road, with the ability to communicate with each other using video and text to talk about what’s going on at St. Clair College, what are the events, what are the employment opportunities,” said Ann Hetherington, Director of Marketing.

St. Clair College will be the first school in North America to launch WeCam Technologies Inc. student application called StudentCampus.

One day last year in June, an idea was formed over lunch at Vito’s Pizzeria. St. Clair Vice-President, John Fairley came to WeCam President and CEO Rob Whent to talk about Whent’s already existing app and suggest some changes for a more specific student based network.

“Student campus would allow the school administration to send out bulletins to any campus or even area od study they want,” said Whent.

There are several Facebook pages with a connection to St. Clair. However, most of them consist of anonymous posters and some of the mystery typists have generated cyber bullying, according to Student Representative Council President, Sarah Ryrie.

“When somebodies anonymous they can say whatever they want to say about someone online and no one knows. And that’s what these pages are; They’re Spotted On pages for you to leave anonymous comments. I love seeing all of the positive ones, but it breaks my heart to see the ones that aren’t,” said Ryrie.

StudentCampus uses the St. Clair email to connect students to one another from around the world. Since the college is a pilot platform for the application, the mobile communicator is restricted to St. Clair connect emails for now. Whent wants to see the app spread to the rest of Canada and spill into United States and eventually around the world.

“It’s more important to meet other people. The more people you know, you never know when that’s going to help you down the line,” said Nicholson. “I haven’t even tried it yet, so it should be interesting to see how it goes.”

Nicholson thinks it will be a great asset for group projects and keeping updated on school events and program changes.

Ryrie looks forward to using the app as a way to communicate face to face with students and inform them about what the SRC is doing.

“Having a great college experience is not always academics; it’s your personal life,” said Ryrie. “You have to have fun sometimes.”

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