the making of Digitr
The mPass, now called Digitr, was developed by 17 year old Omar Elamri, a gifted, self-taught coder, and an incoming Senior at the Minnetonka Public School District in Minnesota. He developed the app when he was 12 as a project for a student coding group in his school, Coders Unite.
The idea of the hallway pass came from a teacher when Omar's Coders Unite group was asked to develop an app. It started as a collaboration between Omar and another student. However the app has undergone several iterations and far from the original ‘bare bones’ version it once was. Determined to create a 'legit' app, Omar started from scratch again. He kept on improving the mPass to create a better user experience, a simpler but enhanced graphic interface and deliver real solutions to the school’s need for a digital hallway pass. His passion for coding, technology and anything Apple, have been the driving forces why he persevered on this project on his own.
In between classes, school breaks and a summer vacation, he painstakingly spent hundreds of hours coding Digitr. As he was able to build and design the app, he then proceeded to learn Swift - Apple’s coding program for mobile apps as well as its Xcode compiler code so it can be ready for school use. After a few rounds of code tweaking, testing and improvements, Omar, together with the school’s information technology (IT) group, were able to deploy the app on the school’s server and be ready for testing. In January 2017, Digitr was launched as a pilot program for some classes. Today, it is now in full use in his entire school.
It took Omar over a year to develop Digitr that can stand the rigorous demands of a mobile app worthy of school applications. In February 2017, Omar presented Digitr to the school board and some Apple representatives took time to catch this. They were impressed at the simplicity and capability of the app and how it was developed by a 12 year old. They remarked that Omar is the youngest developer in the midwest region to build an app and successfully integrate it within an existing Apple school enterprise account.
The mPass, the original name of Digitr, is now a patented app with the United States Copyright Office. Digitr is a registered trademark under the US Patent and Trademark Office. Digitr is now available on the App store as well as a web-based app (for Chromebook and other devices). It is also enabled for both Google and Microsoft (Office 365) accounts. For demo requests and to see how Digitr can fulfill your need for a digital hallway pass, please