Vibe Coding Solutions

As my first blog post on K12Leaders, I’m excited to start with such an interesting topic. The ability to create whole websites and applications without writing a single line of code will dramatically change how we find solutions to problems. Let’s quickly define what vibe coding is:

“Vibe coding is a fresh take in coding where users express their intention using plain speech and the AI transforms that thinking into executable code.” (IBM.com)

For years, I’ve noticed (and experienced) the struggle that school staff have had with creating a substitute teacher schedule for absent teachers due to professional development events, etc. It was very common to spend an egregious amount of time determining how many full-time subs we’d need, the number of potential roving subs, and/or the number of in-house subs we’d need to ensure every teacher was covered. Recently, I used Google AI Studio (with Google’s Gemini 2.5 Preview) to help me build a workable solution from scratch to address this issue.

Side note: approximately a month ago, I began my exploration of Google Gemini Advanced and Google AI Studio. It wasn’t long before I discovered that it did a decent job of helping me write code and create websites based on prompts and descriptions that I gave it. To be perfectly transparent, I hold an authorization in Computer Concepts and Applications (I was originally a Computer Science major in college before switching to Communications). While anyone with little knowledge of computer science or coding will be able to create something useful for themselves and/or others, those with a strong foundation in computer science and coding will increase their productivity exponentially with AI.

I used Google AI Studio to vibe code a website that I’m calling ClassCovered to help address the issue of efficiently creating a “sub coverage schedule”. The user simply creates a CSV file of their master schedule with the following columns:

Teacher Name, Department, Period 1, Period 2, Period 3, etc.

Once the user uploads their CSV file, they are guided by the website to identify which teachers will be absent and for which periods, they will select any full-day and/or roving subs, and any in-house subs. Once everything is selected, the user can print their new master schedule with all teachers and substitutes identified as well as a coverage summary. The full demonstration can be found in my YouTube video below.

My other projects can also be found on my website: www.dietrichucation.com

If you have any feedback, please let me know: dietrichucation@gmail.com