Organization on the go

Andrew Meade / The Brunswickan  

While most UNB students are wondering what they’re going to do with their degrees after they get out of school, third-year computer science student Jason Brennan has already put his education to good use.

Brennan designed an application called Keener for the Apple iPhone. Keener helps students keep track of their grades and organize their schoolwork.

“You put in your courses when you start the semester,” explained the 20-year-old Computer Science student. “You put in your homework assignments, your quizzes, and the labs that are coming up. You put in the due dates and it gives you a list of what’s due, what’s overdue, and what’s due next week. And when you get your tests and assignments back you just punch in your marks and it keeps track of your overall grades for the semester.”

Keener is like a grade calculator. It gives a percentage grade for each class while the class is still ongoing.

“And it does weighted grading, so if your course is 50 per cent essay and 50 per cent exam then that’ll work,” said Brennan.

Brennan developed Keener from November to the start of January, and he lists his own university experience as his inspiration.

“I came up with this because I am not a keener at all,” laughed Brennan. “I’m not very studious and I find that I’m a lot more organized if I have a way to record everything.”

Brennan wanted an organizer that he could keep with him at all times. Agendas are okay to him, but the writing can smudge and it’s hard to fit an agenda in a jeans pocket. Keener proved to be the perfect solution, because like some other students, Brennan found that he already had his iPhone with him most of the time.

Brennan also wanted to learn more about computer programming. He does a lot of programming in his spare time and he wanted see how difficult it was to program for the iPhone.

“I like to keep up on new things so the iPhone is kind of a cool thing for me,” he said. “I was looking for a way to teach myself how to program for them … and this idea kind of just hit me. I figured that would be a good way for me to learn and to help with my schoolwork. And there are a lot of students out there too, so it could be a good market.”

Keener went on sale Jan. 25. It costs $4.99 and Brennan gets 70 per cent, or $3.50, from each sale. The other 30 per cent goes to Apple and the company handles all the billing and shipping.

“You can buy it right on your computer from iTunes, or you can buy it right on your iPhone or iPod touch. They both have a little application called App Store and you just go in and search for Keener.”

Brennan also credits his education at UNB for helping him create Keener.

“They don’t teach this specifically at UNB,” said Brennan in reference to iPhone programming. “They teach programming in a different language, but the same concepts apply. They teach a lot of the same concepts and this was just applying the concepts that I learned.”

“In computer science you learn the basics and then you can apply it to new things. If they tried to teach you the most current thing all the time, they just couldn’t do it because by the time that you start a degree program to the time that you finish, that’s four years, and that’s a lot of time in computer years.”