Reply to ParentVUE, Synergy, My MCPS Classroom, Canvas…Are there shortcuts?

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Reply to "ParentVUE, Synergy, My MCPS Classroom, Canvas…Are there shortcuts?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Even the way they have multiple names for the same platform irritates me.[/quote]

Well, that's not their fault.  Synergy and Canvas are brand-name s for the platforms that are purchased by many school districts across the country.  MyMCPS is the MCPS customization of the Canvas platform, and Parentvue is the MCPS customization of the Synergy platform.  That one's really not that hard to grasp.

The problem seems to be that:  !) canvas is pretty old and limited technology and doesn't play well with newer platforms including google and studysynch, etc. and 2) Synergy is the new shiny product they bought a couple of years ago that was supposed to integrate everything well, but in fact it's a crap product that doesn't do what was hoped and requires a lot of manual fixes.  [/quote]

They made some customizations. Good for them. Just call them Canvas and Synergy.[/quote]

They might not be allowed to, under the terms of the use agreement.  If dozens or hundreds of school systems across the country are using the same platforms, the providers may well require them to use a district-specific name.  Anyway, this strikes me as really the LEAST of the problems.  It takes 5 seconds to learn that "Kleenex"="facial tissue".  The integration across the various platforms is the real problem, as well as smaller problems like there is not an easy way for the system to reflect an auto-grade versus a real grade.  (For example -- for those who have not already encountered the auto-grade problem --- Canvass will automatically grade multiple choice questions, but will mark other types of questions as zero, until the teacher does it manually.  So it may appear that your child has a 4/10 on a test, when in fact the child got 4/4 multiple choice questions correct, and the other 6 questions are waiting for the teacher to grade them.  You can *usually* see this by clicking on the link and opening the test itself, but it may not be open for viewing if not all children have taken the test.)  I think the integration problem became significantly worse with the pandemic because the teachers and MCPS were coming up with a lot of online alternatives (like the music classes with the online submissions) on the fly.  However, the fact that Canvas and Synergy do not play well together does not appear to be a pandemic problem, but rather a problem in either selecting Synergy or in how they customized it.

I think a lot of the frustrated people posting must have 6th graders.  Last year I had a 6th grader and 9th grader and spent about an hour a day, initially, trying to figure this all out and track it.  I eventually had to go down to just checking in once a week, because I have other things in my life.  Thankfully, the teachers were mostly pretty forgiving about deadlines and confusion with the various platforms last year.  If your kid has an IEP, I think they are trying to give assistance on this stuff in the resource classes.  In theory, they should do it for 504 kids as well, but I don't think they do.[/quote]

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