Since last year, students have been hearing rumors about RamLife,  the new Ramaz app and wondering when it will be released, how it will help the student body, and most importantly, exactly what it does. To answer some of these questions, The Rampage met with Sophia Kremer ’20 and Levi Lesches ’21, the two co-creators of the app. 

Since it was announced last year by Kremer in front of the school at the G.O.’s annual election assembly, students began to speculate about when this new and innovative addition to their high school experience would be released. “Our mission,” she said, “is to create a divide between Schoology—that should just be for academics—and RamLife, which will be exclusively for improving your experience here at Ramaz.” 

Once the app is released, Ramaz will be the first school in the Yeshiva League to have a student life app.

To explain how useful the app will be, Lesches recounted a personal story. “When I was in my freshman year, the seven-day rotation schedule really confused me, and I wanted to find a solution to that,” he said, explaining a key feature of the app. During the first weekend of that school year—now two years ago—he built a prototype. 

The app is meant to make students’ lives easier. Schoology is cluttered with academic and non-academic posts from students and teachers alike, some of which are only relevant to a specific group of students, but still reach the entire school. One of the app’s main features is that eventually, teachers and students will be able to post about sports and teams stats without constantly notifying the entire student body through Schoology. The app, however, is not just about posts. Its main feature is the scheduling rotation. As Kremer said, “right now, students walk around with cards that have their schedules on them, and it’s not efficient or modern. The app will prompt students with which class they have next, in what room, and with which teacher.” Along with that, the app will have a whole separate channel for lost and found posts, which currently happen several times a day on Schoology. 

However, after months of hearing the app promoted, students are wondering when the app will be released. The app was supposed to come out at the beginning of the year but the school’s internal technology department held back on sharing information needed to make the app function. Now Kremer and Lesches are just waiting for approval from the people who decide whether or not the app can have Ramaz’s name on it and if it promotes the school appropriately. 

The app is scheduled to be released sometime around November, and its long-awaited reveal is extremely anticipated by the student body as a whole. Tali Sitruk ’22 said that when she came to Ramaz, she quickly figured out the rotation schedule, but she does think that the non-academic Schoology posts can be annoying and that the Ramaz app would be helpful in that aspect. Andrew Spielfogel ’23 said, “The first weeks of school, I found that going from room to room in the Upper School was confusing, so I think that the Ramaz app telling you the information about your next class would be very helpful.” All in all, it seems like the app is going to be an exciting and helpful addition to Ramaz students’ everyday lives.