myMCPS: Facebook for Teachers?

By Tena Thau

It’s contagious.  It’s at B-CC.  And it’s not the swine flu.  

After years of trying to thwart student attempts to access Facebook from school, MCPS is now, ironically, in the process of creating a social-networking site of its own.  Evidentially, not even the county-wide school system is immune to that infectious internet fever.

“MyMCPS” is a new web-based portal that gives teachers and administrators easy access to a variety of important information. It currently provides users with access to everything from a student’s academic history to school-wide demographic data.  Additionally, according to the MCPS Bulletin, developers are in the process of adding a social networking component to myMCPS, which is “likely to include discussion and networking boards, podcasts, instant messaging, and tweeting.”  (Yes, you read that correctly, tweeting.)

Teachers and administrators are swooning over myMCPS’s current features, which they say save lots of time and hassle.  In the past, if teachers wanted to find information about their students, they might need to log in to multiple online databases or take a trip down to main office and guidance office, according to Staff Development Specialist Stacy Farrar.  MyMCPS, conveniently, “puts it all into one place.”

Students, on the other hand, are not as enthused.  MyMCPS allows teachers and administrators unrestricted access to students’ report cards, transcripts, accommodations, disciplinary history, attendance records, and even SAT and ACT scores. As a result, many students feel that their teachers have formed judgments about them, before they have even stepped into class. 

“I don’t like the idea of teachers being able to know everything about their students’ past with the click of a button,” junior Zoë Thorpe explains.  “I feel like students should be able to go into a new class with a clean slate.”

But thanks to myMCPS, no such tabula rasa will exist for students anymore.  Of course, not all students are objecting.  Unsurprisingly, one senior class valedictorian says that she does not mind teachers’ easy access to her flawless four-year record. 

Though teachers are already using myMCPS to view students’ academic history, the social-networking aspect of myMCPS is still in the developmental stages.  Still, the current layout is strikingly similar to Facebook.  For starters, the myMCPS homepage is white and blue.  On the right-hand side of the screen, a list of birthdays is displayed.   Type in a name in the search box, and a student’s profile picture (yearbook photo) and personal information (academic history, telephone number, address, etc.) will be displayed. 

But because the program is so new, much about myMCPS remains largely unknown.  Maybe it will accomplish its goal of “improv[ing] access to information and streamlin[ing] decision making.”   Or, it may just become a breeding ground for that new kind of internet stalker.