CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — Two Cleveland Heights sisters are taking over high school but instead of roaming the hall, they’re creating code.
Nina Serna, 14, is just starting high school but her sister is a senior and is used to getting creative to keep track of her work.
“When I started high school, I had to start keeping track of the hours that I would spend on each school subject so I could earn high school credit,” Maya, 17, said.
From color-coded binders to electronic spreadsheets, she’s tried everything to log hours effectively. A few years ago, she realized all she had to do was look down.
“Almost all teens have their phone with them,” Maya said.
That’s why the app HomieSchooler was created. It’s an easy way to document all activities for homeschooled teenagers and it's only 10 dollars.
“It helps them to track their classes and the time they spend in each of their classes and their grades, their GPA and also awards and certificates they've gotten throughout the year,” Nina said. “It also builds a transcript.”
On top of all their other assignments, the sisters found a way to create this new app. Along the way, the process wasn’t easy.
“We had to spend a lot of time doing this, so it was a lot of late nights, staying up and communicating with the developers in India,” Nina said.
“But there were still some issues that we had to fix, and it was kind of easy to not keep working on it,” Maya added.
Four years and 500 subscribers later, it’s now successfully up and running.
“There's so many homeschoolers out there, I think it's like about 1.8 million in the U.S. and Canada.”
That translates to millions of households that could use this technology, including right here in Cleveland Heights.
“I'm just starting high school,” Nina said. “It's my first year so I'm really excited to be able to use it!”
If you would like to help Maya and Nina with marketing and see more about the app that changes the way homeschoolers keep track of their learning, click this link.