It’s what we’re thinking about the second our alarms sound, the moment before our eyelids open and every minute in between. No, it’s not our significant other. It’s our grades.
“I cringe when I know I have a parking ticket and can’t see my grades [on Home Access Center],” Alexa Davis ’15 said.
Before myHAC, the new Home Access Center App created by Dylan Diamond ’17, accessing grades from a phone was troublesome to say the least. It meant waiting to log onto a computer to be either pleasantly surprised or utterly defeated by how the percentage shown next to the AP Euro unit test you spent 30 minutes cramming for affected your overall grade.
“I felt like I could solve a problem by creating an app that made HAC workable on an iPhone,” Diamond said.
MyHAC is a free and easy way for students to stay up to date with their grades at all times. “It is extremely convenient if you are looking to check your grades on the go and aren’t near a computer,” Graham Gudis ’17, who recently downloaded the app, said.
Besides being tremendously handy, myHAC was created with many other useful features, such as the instant display of your class enrollment list alongside the corresponding grades. At just one glance, there’s the benefit of a quick and easy check-in with every class.
Another helpful feature is that students can easily switch between different quarters, or view all four combined. “In addition, users will also have one-click access to report cards and transcripts,” Diamond said.
The creation of myHAC was not simple to say the least. According to Diamond, he had to be familiar with Objective C, the computer language used to create apps along with Xcode, the programming interface for iOS development.
Unlike many Staples students who plan on downloading myHAC, Sloane Cooper ’15 doesn’t think it’s necessary. “I only check my grades about once a week, so I’m fine with the online version,” Cooper said.
However, for both students planning on downloading the app or not, there might be additional apps coming your way serving even more benefits to the Staples student body.
“After creating myHAC, I definitely plan to make more apps in the future,” Diamond said.
