Synergy is an education platform that Montgomery County students use to keep track of their grades and important information, including their class schedules. Teachers use Synergy to put in student’s grades and attendance, and is used by everyone in MCPS to make sure the students are prepared and have the information they need.
On Mar. 22, an update took place, allowing parents home and online registration screens that display easy navigator tools and user-friendly topics. Students are now able to change their grades manually to see what would happen if they got a certain grade. The grades reset when the app is closed or when the reset button is pressed.
While creating this update, Synergy was shut down for two days and students could not see their grades. Teachers also couldn’t put grades into the grade book. “One of my tests was graded and I haven’t looked at Synergy and when I tried to open it, it would not open so that was very frustrating,” freshman Jolie Ginsburg said.
Students report that it is convenient that they can change their grades to see what they could have gotten. “This update is OK. It took me a little to figure it out but it is still very confusing finding assignments. I like how I can change my grade though to see what would happen if I got a certain grade. It is very helpful to calculate my grades,” Ginsburg said.
However, students overwhelmingly report that they do not like this update because they have to scroll down to find an assignment and the site is hard to navigate. “I do not like the update since it is very hard to navigate and I am still not used to it,” freshman Jia Micalizzi said.
Teachers also say they do not like this update as it takes a while to get used to and can be confusing to figure out at first. “I do not like the change because it’s confusing and they switched the buttons around so I click on the wrong button sometimes,” history teacher Casey Hopkins said.
Logging in to students’ attendance and grades is much harder for teachers. “They changed the attendance schedule format so it is harder to log in someone’s attendance and takes longer. It’s unnecessary time that I could be teaching,” Hopkins said.
There are students and teachers who do not care about the update, but wish that it could’ve been made a little later in the year. “The update does not bother me but it could have been made later in the year so when Synergy shut down it wasn’t right at the end of the quarter,” Micalizzi said.
