Students don’t understand reasons for MyMCPS switch

Helpful

MyMCPS is the newly official site for all Montgomery County students to see their grades and assignments. This has caused quite a stir amongst students. “MyMCPS is very talked about,” freshman Jayrin Mondoe said.
MyMCPS was created in the hopes of making school information easier to access. Some students believe differently. “I can’t access it at home. I get the error 401 message, it’s really annoying,” junior Eva Yaghyan said.
An issue students say is that it’s frustrating switching platforms each year.Ranging from Edline to Google Classroom and now to MyMCPS, each switch is a new challenge. “I don’t know why the site changes every year, I wish it didn’t. I think whatever new idea or technology being created is sold to schools. My MCPS is the newest one,” NSL teacher Maima Barclay said.
Despite objections MyMCPS is superior because it is more advanced. According to hbr.org, in assessing an emerging technology’s potential, the paramount concern is whether it can satisfy customer needs and deliver value in a better way. Choosing MyMCPS as the newly approved site shows it works best.
A problem teachers state is the little time they have to understand how the site works. “I wish we had more time to figure out how the site worked, instead of having to use it the first week of school. We had training but it was minimal and only for an hour. I’m still figuring out how to use My MCPS. If it was concurrent with Google Classroom, we could have started to learn how to use MyMCPS. Then they could have slowed faded out Google Classroom,” Barclay said.
Changes can occur at anytime, especially when it comes to technology. Regardless of how unsettling the change can be, it is for the greater good. Before students had to visit three sites. Now all that necessary information is one place and is less time consuming.
One last concern students voiced is how MyMCPS doesn’t match up to Google Classroom. “They should go back to using Google Classroom. It was easier to access. The error 401 message doesn’t appear every time, but it usually shows up right after I try to use MyMCPS. I may be technologically challenged but a lot of other people have this problem too,” sophomore Molly Geicher said.
Students can get frustrated with MyMCPS and give up. MyMCPS may not work 100 percent of the time,but ultimately its the better option and here to stay.

-Elena Tinelli
staff writer

Harmful

After missing a day of school, you open up MyMCPS Classroom in an attempt to catch up on the work you missed. The classes with the teachers who use MyMCPS appear on dashboard. Where to first?
You look in the “To-Do” section on the right side of your screen only to be met with notifications from a week ago. Quickly enough, you find the homework announcement under assignments. Now: to find the actual sheet. From here, it’s a guessing game for whether you will find it under files, modules or pages. If you guess wrong, it’s back-and-forth clicking for days.
All you can think is how unnecessarily complicated this website is. You ache for your Google Classroom normalcy.
Innovation is imperative to the advancement of society and culture, but how much modification is too much? At what point does it become a futile effort to improve already exceptional aspects of life? Needlessly combining Edline and Google Classroom into a muddle of a website, MyMCPS Classroom is the greatest innovative disappointment in Montgomery County.
While present last year, the faults of MyMCPS are more apparent now because of the new requirement for teachers to solely use this platform. This policy has taken away Google Classroom, which students argue is a more user-friendly way to turn in assignments. “I feel like MyMCPS has too many things to it,” senior Kayla Hill said.
The disarray of MyMCPS can be overwhelming. “[People] can’t figure out how to turn stuff in and have to open up two different windows just to get to it instead of instantly popping up for Google Classroom,” senior Caity Greenspun said.
Others dissent saying that MyMCPS has more structure to it and is therefore clearer. “It’s more organized than Google Classroom,” senior Grace Henschel said.
Last year, teachers used a combination of MyMCPS and Google Classroom, which led to confusion on where to turn in assignments. Despite the new enforcement to use MyMCPS, the school still lacks the uniformity on turn-in locations as teachers continue to use Google Classroom for its appealing simplicity. “Some use Google and MyMCPS and it’s impossible to figure out where to turn [assignments] in,” sophomore Laura See said.
Students also counter-argue that MyMCPS is superior because grades and assignments are in the same domain. Nonetheless, you have to go through MyMCPS portal to see your grades, a whole other sign-in process. What is the harm in allowing for a duality of Classrooms?
The attempt to have everything in one place is appreciated, but not needed. There shouldn’t be extra work in finding out how to turn-in your work. MyMCPS Classroom adds a layer of complexity to something that didn’t need alteration. “It sucks,” See said.

-Chloe Perel
editor-in-chief