I work at a school in NYC and have a software idea that could better support the new NYC phone ban law than current market options (i.e. Yondr pouches).
Right now at my school, students and staff scan a QR code upon entering the building to indicate that they are in the building. They scan again on the way out to indicate they've left the building. This is super helpful for attendance, particularly in emergency situations (fire drills, etc).
Imagine if when students scanned their QR code, it also activated an app similar to Opal or ScreenZen, but with an admin preset whitelisted apps. The idea is that this app would default deny access to all apps on students' phones except the admin preset whitelisted ones such as Phone, Calculator, etc. Depending on the age/needs of the student, other apps like Spotify, or medical apps could also be whitelisted.
My question is -- is this idea possible to create?
We would need admin preset controls to create the preset whitelist. We can't have students picking their own restrictions, as we know most would opt to not restrict at all.
We would need an admin dashboard so teachers/admin can see which students have activated the app in the building, and which may be trying to sneakily avoid it.
We would ideally need to be able to whitelist both system apps like Phone and Calculator, as well as non-system apps such as Spotify (and medical apps -- we have some students who manage/monitor their Diabetes with an app).
I don't have a background in software. I'm a math and health teacher. I've experimented with trying to have friends who majored in CS to create this app for me, but they've all either struggled/lost interest. So I'm also looking for a business partner in this venture.
If anyone has any guidance here, it would be so helpful! My boss (Head of School) is super interested in this idea and significantly prefers it to every other alternative that he has encountered. The problem is this idea does not exist yet!
Note: I know this is a super similar idea to the app and product "Brick". Notably, though, Brick does not have the ability for admin preset controls, or the admin dashboard. We reached out to the company to see if they're create this for us and they said it's a back burner idea that they're aware of, but it's not a priority for them right now.
Thank you for any guidance!
