Thursday 18 / April / 2024
Muscat: He may be only 15, but Omani teenager Nasr Al-Rahbi is a veteran with the experience of having created 13 applications.
His latest offering is an app to help his school friends study better.
Called ‘Al-Talib Al-Omani’, which translates as ‘Omani students’ app’, it is an android application that will help school students by making educational websites appear in a simpler, easier-to-use format.
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While his fellow students would relax after coming back from school, young Nasr preferred to design and improve dozens of Android applications.
Nasr, who is from Izki, first developed an interest in app design when he was just 10. An 11th-grade student at Lubaid bin Rabiah School, his first endeavour was to create an app to detect fake photos application, some five years ago. Al-Talib Al-Omani is the first app that will feature both his own design and development, having previously only developed apps.
The current application with 4,000 users aims to solve the problems of school students in the field of technology. The app also includes chat rooms and special exam discussion forums for students and teachers to communicate effectively.
“I got the idea after observing my friends who lacked the experience to use the internet,” Nasr told Times of Oman. “Most of them were not able to benefit from the Ministry of Education’s websites, so I facilitated a multi-operation app for websites, by reducing them to make them easy-to-understand.”
According to users’ comments on Nasr's social media accounts, browsing sites is a lot easier now. Opening windows of web pages for zawiti (student accounts), bawaba talimia (the doors to education) and muntada tarboi (online grading system) are much faster and more attractive. Parents can also follow their children’s academic performances through this app.
Nasr's chat features enable users to insert text, videos and photographs. Private chat room windows are also available for students from grade 5-12.
“This feature gives students a chance to discuss and exchange information from around the Sultanate. It helps them build new relations in the knowledge space,” he explained. “The unexpected thing was the participation of teachers in the app. Yesterday, for example, one math teacher offered free classes to students who needed them. I have also enforced ethical rules for the users. If I observe any unethical attitude in public or private chat rooms, I block the user immediately.”
This app aside, Nasr has helped WhatsApp a month ago and added three new options to the Helpful Robot app.
“The robot is now programmed to text messages when the user gets busy elsewhere,” he revealed. “I created an Arabic version and corrected some technical mistakes with regards to receiving and encoding WhatsApp applications."
He also modified the Hidden Eye app, which deals with high-level security. “This app captures the face of anyone who takes your mobile phone,” remarked Nasr. “Other apps capture your face only on entering the password, but my update captures faces immediately after the screen is touched. I also worked on the Smart Eraser application. It enables users to change or edit photo backgrounds.”
Although successful, Nasr has not asked people around him for help. “I do not ask for support from people around me,” he affirmed. “I have friends from the USA, UK, Syria, Morocco and other countries. They support me technically through the internet.”
“I am now working on two new applications called Oman News and API WhatsApp,” he mentioned. “These apps will include categories of our daily life. I also have the ability to contact international developers to add flexible features for Omani users.
“What distinguished my work as an applications developer is that I added newer, simpler characteristics, which people really needed in Oman,” he noted.
