Grades app no longer available for use

The Grades app had always been popular among San Marin students, but on April 30, 2018 it was shut down. Although the Grades app is no longer available, there is a new Aeries app that students can download.
“The Grades app helped me have a quick way to check my grades and allowed me to stay on track,” senior Naomi Michaelis said. “I was always able to access my work and test grades.”
Adrien Truong, a Stanford student graduating in 2019, created the app his senior year of high school. He is currently finishing his junior year in college. Camden Illif, Vice President of Aeries, said he has known Truong since he was a senior in high school and described him as a “very talented developer” who has “provided useful functionality for students and parents.”
Many students said they liked the simplicity of the Grades app.
“I think it was a very helpful app,” senior Lindsey Lober said. “I was able to check grades so easily. I believe [the app] helps kids set goals and keep motivated. At some points it did stress me out, but it helped to keep me on track for my grades.” The new Aeries app is the reason for the shutdown of the Grades app.
“With the release of the official Aeries Mobile Portal App, it was decided that it would be best for the Grades app to retire smoothly, as some of the data access points and techniques that the Grades app used to access information from Aeries was being retired,” Illif said. “Had we just discontinued these undocumented access points, there would have been chaos with Grades app users.”
The Grades app was not an official Aeries app, and issues in the Grades app were being attributed to Aeries software.
Although some students may be disappointed to hear the news, there are many new features coming to the Aeries app that students can look forward to. This includes integrating geolocation to the “Find My School” process, biometric authentication where systems compare biometric data captured to stored and confirmed data, push-notifications, and making it so parents can clear student absences through the app. In addition, Aeries employees are working on making a Teacher app and an app for school staff. Many students were afraid of losing the “What-If” calculator on the Grades app, a feature that enabled them to see what percentage points they needed to get on an assignment in order to maintain a certain grade, but the new Aeries app already contains that feature.
Math teacher David Blair doesn’t think losing the Grades app is a positive or negative because “we’re always going to check grades. That’s a product of the grading system we have and what we’re trying to accomplish. That’s what needs to be examined.”