The students at Mount Michael have come to appreciate and embrace the website Sycamore. However, that is changing this school year with the adoption of a new student management software JMC.
The difficult switch to JMC was an intentional one. “While Sycamore served us well, there were some frustrations that came along with it,” Cormier said. “One being that Sycamore does not directly integrate with other programs such as Canvas and other communication tools, which will be implemented in the future,” Cormier said.
The process of changing to JMC was largely due to the hard work of theology and academic decathlon teacher Mr. Dave Cormier, administrative assistant Mrs. Gail Raabe, and physics and calculus teacher Mr. Michael Williams. They worked tirelessly over the summer to transfer data from Sycamore to JMC.
The data involved in the transfer included student and parent information, schedules, and class lists. On top of that, they had to take several training classes that lasted from 30 minutes to one hour or more.
Some confusion stemmed from the busy start menu with many options, some of which are not supported. For example, the “lunch” tab is not supported because it is not meant to see the menu. The tab is meant to keep track of lunch balances, which Mount Michael does not use. Similarly, the transcript tab also is not supported.
For teachers, the change to JMC makes entering assignments easier. “It doesn’t change how I enter grades, it changes how I see them,” engineering teacher Mrs. Shanna Sedlacek said. Sedlacek also commented how it easily differentiates test and assignment grades. “It simplifies the test and assignment grade inputs, and it’s all in one place,” Sedlacek said.
However, the students generally disagree with the change to JMC. This is most likely due to the learning curve with every new program, and JMC is no exception. Most of the complaints towards the site regard the design of the website.
“It looks extremely old…like the same year computers were invented,” Aidan Balas ‘25 said. Another complaint from students is not being able to see their cumulative GPA easily.
“I am willing to change for the sake of efficiency,” biology and anatomy teacher Dr. Crnkovich said.
Even though JMC has not initially been received well, in the long run, it will improve the grading process and allow for future integration to be possible, only making the students’ and faculty’s lives easier.
