Students at The LIFT in Abilene ISD are building a custom reservation system for the Sky Cafe, the campus's student-driven bistro that is open to the public. The project started as a senior capstone in Daniel Kaplinski's Practicum in Information Technology course and is now being carried forward by a junior in his AP Computer Science A class.

Both students came into Daniel's classroom with no coding experience. After completing Skill Struck's Python 1, Python 2, and Python 3 courses, they had the foundation to build a real-world application from scratch for their own school community.

Improving the Reservations System

The Sky Cafe is a student-driven bistro at The LIFT that serves scratch-made food with seasonal and global influences. The cafe was designed to be open to the public from the start. After its first year, the campus assistant director created a Google Form to take reservations based on feedback from visitors.

The Google Form works, but it stretches the limits of what a simple form can do. The cafe needed a more efficient and professional solution, so the administration team asked whether Daniel's students could build a custom system. They took on the project.

What the Students Built

The senior who started the project built the reservation website as their yearlong practicum project. Customers enter their name, phone number, and email, then select a date and time from dropdown menus. They can add up to five additional people to a reservation, and the form adds a set of fields for each guest as the number is selected.

The site was built to meet the cafe's real requirements. When the cafe launch was being planned, kitchen staff asked for an allergy field so they could be informed of dietary restrictions in advance. The reservation site collects allergy information for every guest on the reservation, not just the person booking. The page also carries The LIFT's branding and a photo of the Sky Cafe dining room.

How It Works

The student built the site with HTML and CSS. The form checks information before it can be submitted: phone numbers must follow a standard format, email addresses must be valid, and required fields cannot be left blank. The layout adjusts to different screen sizes, with headings and the logo resizing to fit a laptop or a phone.

The student also commented the code throughout, explaining what each section does and noting where to connect the form once the cafe's system is ready. Clear documentation is a professional habit, and it makes the project easier for the cafe, or future students, to maintain and build on.

Carrying the Project Forward

The senior who started the reservation site has since graduated. A junior in Daniel's AP Computer Science A class is now actively working on the project and building on what the senior started.

"Having the opportunity to apply my skills to solve a real-world problem and help my community not only helped me get a sense of how it feels to work on projects that will soon become production ready, but they also allowed me to test out and improve on the skills that I have learned from the classroom with a hands-on experience!" the junior shared.

The Teacher Who Guided the Work

Daniel Kaplinski is the Computer Science teacher for Abilene ISD. He teaches Computer Science 1, Computer Science 2, AP Computer Science A (LOTE), and Practicum in Information Technology, and he has used Skill Struck in his classroom for two years.

Practicum is a senior capstone course. Students spend the year on a project of their choice while working toward an industry-based certification. Daniel encourages his students to get comfortable facing problems they don't immediately know how to solve, and the Sky Cafe project put that into practice.

"The most rewarding aspect was watching the students embrace a complex challenge and take full ownership of it," Daniel said. "Seeing them push past initial hesitation to design a solution they are truly proud of has been incredibly fulfilling."

What's Next

The reservation site is not live yet. Daniel and his students are planning to meet with the Abilene ISD technology team to decide how to host the site and integrate it into the district's existing web infrastructure. Once that is in place, the Sky Cafe will be able to retire its Google Form and take reservations through the student-built system.

Advice for Educators

For teachers who want to give students real-world coding projects, Daniel recommends normalizing uncertainty.

"Computer science naturally comes with many unknowns," he said. "Remind students that software engineers, and even we teachers, rarely have all the answers from the start. Navigating the uncertainty and discovering the solution is where the real fun happens!"

The Sky Cafe project shows what that looks like in practice. Two students with no prior coding experience built foundational skills through Skill Struck's Python courses, then applied them to a problem their own campus needed solved. For district and CTE leaders, it is a clear example of a CS pathway that connects classroom learning to real community impact and industry-based certifications.

Thank you to Daniel and both students for sharing their work.