Bahut.fr.ht was a collaborative school platform for our class, created in January 2011 with my friend Tom.
In 2011, I was in 10th grade (seconde in France), in the first year of high school where I meet Tom, a classmate who was also passionate about computers.
One day on Skype, Tom explained to me his way of learning history lessons by typing them on his computer. I suggested putting the content online to help other students and we get the idea of creating a website for our class during our free time.
First version of Bahut.fr.ht
The website was named “Bahut” (informal French word for school), with the catchphrase “the class website”. It contained:
- Lessons of different subjects (maths, history, geography, French, English, physics, chemistry, biology…)
- Helps for exams
- Weekly schedule with all the homework
- A member area with a special page only accessible by the student category
- A forum, chat, comments and private messages between members
- A collaborative part with a text editor to submit new lessons to the platform
Second version of Bahut.fr.ht
Bahut.fr.ht was powered by WordPress on Tom’s hosting (OVH), with a domain name redirection “.fr.ht” to be easier to remember.
One of the challenges was to get classmates on the website, so I printed flyers of the URL in browsers to promote the project between classes.
A lot of students were on Facebook, so in addition to our Facebook page, I signed up as a Facebook developer and created a Facebook application, which was an iFrame wrapping the website, to give access to the platform without leaving Facebook.
At that time, I discovered how to create Facebook ads and users targeting possibilities, as well as user data accessible from a Facebook developer app.
Flyers of Bahut.fr.ht URL in browsers
After a while, teachers heard about the project and liked the idea. Some of them helped us by giving more content such as videos or slides to illustrate lessons, which we hosted on the website.
Teachers’ contents on Bahut.fr.ht
This project helped me to realize the potential of technologies and their impact on people, especially how people can trust others over the Internet. I remember a chat I had one day with a classmate:
- “Hey Arnaud, what is the homework for tomorrow? There is nothing on the website.”
- “I haven’t had time to put it online yet, but check your diary.”
- “I don’t have a diary anymore since you put all the homework on the website!”
- “What, seriously…?!”
Bahut.fr.ht was a success: it helped our classmates and students from other classes to learn better. The platform received more than 1 100 visitors in less than 6 months.
The project ended in June 2011 with the end of the school year, and is no longer available.
Final version of Bahut.fr.ht
