Anurag Kurmi

Case study · Education · California, United States

Highlands Brain: real-time learning tools for a California charter school network

How I built Highlands Brain's web features (real-time chat, live video sessions and geofenced attendance) for a California charter school network.

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Client
Highlands Community Charter
Industry
Education
Location
California, United States
My role
Frontend engineer: React web app
Engagement
Software Engineer at Unico Connect, 2021–2023
Highlands learning report on the web, listing students with their progress, shown on a laptop
The web learning report, from the platform today.

Outcomes

  • 80%

    better attendance accuracy

  • 35%

    higher student retention

  • 15,000+

    students on the platform today

Context

The problem

  • 01.

    Instruction, communication and administration ran on separate tools, with no single source of truth for student progress.

  • 02.

    Classrooms are multilingual, and adult-education programs carry their own compliance requirements.

  • 03.

    Attendance had to be reliable across campuses and live online sessions.

Approach

Technical decisions

  1. 01

    Real-time messaging

    Chat runs over WebSockets with Socket.io, so messages reach students and teachers the moment they are sent.

  2. 02

    Live sessions inside the platform

    Video sessions use WebRTC and Zoom, so classes happen in the same place as chat and coursework.

  3. 03

    Location-verified attendance

    Attendance is checked against campus geofences with the browser's Geolocation API.

My work

What I built

Software Engineer at Unico Connect, 2021–2023

  • Built the React web app's real-time chat with Socket.io.
  • Integrated live video sessions with WebRTC and Zoom.
  • Built geofencing-based attendance flows with the Geolocation API.
  • Built gamified engagement features and educational resource management.

Built with

  • React.js
  • Socket.io
  • WebRTC
  • Zoom
  • Geolocation API

Platform stack

  • React
  • Flutter
  • Xano
  • Node.js
  • PostgreSQL
  • Firebase
  • Twilio
  • Stripe
  • Stream

Screens

The platform today

Highlands student home screen with today's classes and upcoming events
Student home: today's classes and upcoming events.
Highlands class detail with room, schedule and staff
Class detail: room, schedule and staff.
Highlands Brain AI assistant home screen with suggested topics
Brain AI assistant.
Highlands Brain AI chat answering with cited sources
Brain AI answers with cited sources.
Highlands Talkative Assist translating between Spanish and English
Two-way translation between Spanish and English.
Highlands emergency report with campus location selection on a map
Emergency report: pick a campus location on the map.
Highlands digital student ID card
Digital student ID.
Highlands master agreement with enrolled courses and signatories
Master agreements with courses and signatories.

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