When Kyle Parker, a software engineer at Ball State, created The Traveler app, he figured it would be used solely by groups of students at the university.

 

Although seven Ball State student groups have used the app, which is available in the Google Play store, it has nearly 100,000 downloads and has been used by people in more than 190 different countries.

 

The Traveler app, which works only on Samsung devices, can track the paths users take throughout the day and pinpoint media on the map, including photos, video, audio, sketches and notes.

 

“It’s just been an interesting project to see something that was done for students suddenly be out there all over the place,” Parker said. “Hopefully, if all goes well, it is going to be approved as an official app for Glass. There are only about 50 apps out there now, so to have the Ball State app be one of those 50 would be an interesting thing to see.”

 

Although the app is growing and being used all over the world, Parker is interested in seeing how groups of Ball State students can use the app.

 

Most recently, a group of nine Ball State journalism department students travelled to Budapest for a week in March and used the app to help them collect data for travel writing stories.

 

The app was originally targeted toward architecture students who travelled and collected sketches and photos of structures from their world tour. Now, Parker says part of his project is to see how students with different majors can use the app.

 

“I didn’t have any preconceived notions going in with the different groups,” Parker said. “It wasn’t 'you need to use it like this.’ It was more so ‘here’s a tool, how can we morph it or develop it or add to it so you as the student in your particular discipline could get some benefit out of it.’“[The goal] really is trying to see how does it fit in all the different disciplines and what benefits the students can gain from the app.”

 

The seven student groups that have used The Traveler at Ball State have been to 29 different countries, including Russia, Chili, Argentina, Italy and Peru.

 

“If you had a day-long tour and you were going around a city, as part of a guided tour, there might be things you wanted to go back and see later,” Parker said. “They would be able to use the map and retrace their steps from that path they recorded to go back and find that café or that point of interest or that museum, whatever it may be to go back to.”

 

Students on the Budapest trip were able to use this map feature to track their journeys, especially on the day when the students travelled to three different countries — Hungary, Austria and Slovakia.

 

Sophomore Amon Rizvi is one of the students who used the app while traveling around Budapest.

 

“I was able to sign on with my Traveler username and GPS where we were going,” Rizvi said. “I would open up the tablet, press record and close it and put it in my backpack all day. Periodically, I would get the tablet out and take photos of where I was at so I was able to have the photos attached on the map.”

 

The app allows travelers to relive their journeys step-by-step and picture-by-picture. Students on the Budapest trip have used the data collected from The Traveler to help write their stories.

 

Information collected by the Traveler app has been a part of 11 presentations, two publications and two contests, as well as featured in dozens of promotional materials.

 

To show what the students who went to Budapest did with the app, Parker has a website that combines the maps and data from all the Ball State students who have travelled abroad and used the app.