Photo Illustration by Bryce Owen ’17 | myBrophy will be used in classes beginning this year, replacing NetClassroom.
By Kaleb Lucero ’18
THE ROUNDUP
The switch from Netclassroom to myBrophy has gone “pretty good so far,” according to Educational Technology Administrator Mr. Blair Cook.
myBrophy is now the school’s “Student Information System,” where students and parents can access grades and daily schedules, as well as new items such as campus news and sports schedules.
“Things have gone how I hoped,” Mr. Cook said, who spent the summer transferring data from NetClassroom to myBrophy. “This is a massive project, so there’s going to be snafus here and there, but we haven’t had any major issues so far.”
The reason for the switch was that “the system we had been using before hadn’t been updated in a long time, and wouldn’t be updated any time in the future,” he said.
This is because Blackbaud, the company behind NetClassroom, had acquired WhippleHill Communications, Inc., and decided to make their program (myschoolapp) the focus of their efforts, according to Mr. Cook.
This means that there would be little to no support for the NetClassroom program from here on out.
“Everyone using what we were using is going to move to the new platform,” Mr. Cook said.
As for other reasons to change, according to the Brophy website, “myBrophy features much more robust capabilities than NetClassroom.”
According to both the Brophy website and Mr. Cook, myBrophy is also supposed to be more responsive and better supported on the devices you may be viewing it on, which includes iPads and smartphones.
As for what visibility changes between two systems, Mr. Cook said “there’s a lot greater access to information” for students, parents, teachers and administration.
This is due to the fact that myBrophy connects directly with the Brophy website.
“It’s like a two-sided coin,” Mr. Cook said. “My Brophy is the back end and the website is the public side. The way it’s working is that if you’re a member of the community, information will be tailored for you, whereas the website is becoming more public, generic information on Brophy, not tailored.”
For example, Mr. Cook said if a student was on the football team, he would log into his account and easily be able to find schedules, scores and other information that would come from the Brophy website itself.
As for the future of the program, there will not be an app coming, but there are many changes to come, as, according to Mr. Cook, the company has an aggressive stance toward updating the application, and Brophy is actively submitting suggestions to them.
As of right now, Mr. Cook said he hasn’t heard much complaints from students, and said that he has received positive feedback from teachers.
Alvaro Marcelino ’18 said that so far it hasn’t caused too many problems for him, and said that for the most part it had been a neutral experience.
“It’s new and I’m still getting used to it, but I like it,” he said.
However, Ian Lobo ’18 said that while he was at first excited for the change, he now believes that the new system is too complicated.
He said that he didn’t like the aesthetics of NetClassroom, and thought that myBrophy might be more appealing.
“The positive aspect of myBrophy is that it’s organized with the ability to view your classes and assignments in one section and has another place to see what’s going on in the Brophy calendar,” he said.
The negative aspects, he said, is that it is too complicated, and said that it took too much time to view grades, with so many buttons that it seems cluttered.
“Right now the only flaw that it has is that it is too complex,” he said. “Most kids at Brophy just want to view their grades and that’s it.”
