by Rebecca Gorelov’14, News Editor

The following are edited excerpts from an interview that I conducted with Vihar Desu on January 31, 2013. Vihar is a sophomore at Newark Academy and the creator of the application myWords SAT Vocabulary.

To start us off what exactly does the application do?

The application helps kids learn SAT Vocabulary. Its unique feature, however, is that it incorporates basic memorization techniques in short stories and word groupings to make learning the vocabulary easier.

What inspired you to create myWords?

I first started thinking about creating an iPhone application the winter of my freshman year, so exactly a year ago. I wanted to create something that was useful to students, so I ended up at SAT Vocabulary because that’s something all students need and something that I need to work on anyways.

Why choose to make an  iPhone application?

Before freshman year I decided I wanted to explore options of making a real project, you know to create a real product. Programming in Apple devices seemed like the best opportunity to do this. Apple made their software so accessible that its makes it easy for consumers (and programmers) to make applications. I decided to take advantage of that and learn about the development process. Also many people here at Newark Academy and around the world have iPhones so it was really cool to make something that everyone could use.

What was the process behind making it?

I actually started out by not knowing anything about Apple or the application development process, so it was really a learning experience for me. Once I got the idea, I looked at a bunch of applications that were already on the market in order to make sure mine would be unique. Over the next three months I continued to develop my ideas. The next step was for me to learn how to program applications. So I asked Mr. Alfred, Newark Academy’s computer science teacher , on how I should go about learning it. I decided to go to Princeton University for 4 weeks where I learned how to program, how to launch an application and lastly how Apple Development worked. By the end of the program I had created a basic framework for my application and began collecting materials. After Princeton I had to find a developer because this was a big project and I needed outside help. So my parents and I found one in India and I’ve been working with him ever since.

How did you incorporate Newark Academy into it?

I knew that Newark Academy was the best place to start the process. Firstly students are the ones who will be using the application so they know what techniques and what functions will help them. Secondly the teachers were incredibly helpful in creating all of the content.  Together the students and teachers helped create 10 different packets (all ranging in difficulty), short stories, list of vocabulary words, sentence completions, and most importantly they helped create new definition to all the words so not to break any copyright laws.

What stage is the application in now?

We are in the final stage, 95% of the application is ready. A few weeks ago I had a beta launch for the Newark Academy Community. With the helpful feedback from it I was able to see where the application crashed and the mistakes in the content. I hope the application will be finished by next week, so then we can send it the Apple Application store. It usually takes two to three weeks to get it accepted so my goal is that it will be released by February 28.