Synergy 2024
Synergy Update - Oct. 2023
Synergy SIS has been with us for a long time now, and over the years a few changes have sprinkled in here and there. This month one of the more dramatic changes will be happening as we prepare for the full adoption of Synergy Assessment in our classroom.
Some of these changes will be immediately apparent, while others will be more subtle. The biggest changes are to the new landing page and gradebook.
Below you'll find a list of changes and menu items. If you have any questions or issues don't hesitate to contact support at support@kernhigh.org for assistance.
Updated Landing Page
Old Landing Page
Previously, our landing page was just each class's seating chart. This defaulted to whatever class was currently going on in the day - or - your first period of the day.
New Landing Page in the 2024 update
Now, there's a new dashboard style home page that you'll find when you first log in. This will show tiles for each of your classes and you'll be able to quickly access whichever class you need to access quickly and efficiently. You can even jump immediately to a specific class's Attendance, Reports, Communication, Seating Chart, or Grade Book. And you'll see information at a glance about Unscored Assignments, Students Missing Work, and New Students to your class.
These can be customized by clicking the gear icon, where you can select an image to represent the class or enable/disable the information at a glance icons.
Finding Attendance and Defaults
Attendance is now behind a button called "Attendance" this is an updated "Attendance by List" that includes student pictures in order to efficiently take list-based roll.
For the traditional "Attendance by Seating Chart," click the button called "Seating Chart" and you'll find yourself in familiar territory.
If you dislike the new landing page, you can switch back to the classic seating chart landing page by selecting the gear icon and choosing which landing page type you want.
You can always get back to the new landing page by selecting "Home" on the blue navigation bar, and then "Home Page."
New Attendance by List
As mentioned earlier...
There is a new "Attendance by List" feature that includes student photos and notification icons. The button to change attendance is now a large circle on the right hand side, click once for Absent and Twice for Tardy. Three clicks will take you back to "blank" or "present."
Make sure you save attendance by clicking the small disk icon at the top right of the page.
New Grade Book
Changes to Grade Book
There is also a big cosmetic change to Grade Book. Most of the changes are visual, but there are also several new options to change and alter what appears on the grade book based on your preferences. The biggest difference is that assignments are no longer as clearly color coded (though they are still present) and there's more space per row for easier reading. Many of these settings can be adjusted using the options menu and toggle buttons on the far right of the screen. You can also now group assignments by unit and you can visually delineate scores using analysis bands. If you prefer the old grade book, simple access the Grade Book menu and select "Grade Book Main." It is possible that this older grade book will be renamed to Grade Book "Classic," or something similar, in the future.
To make new assignments,
New Assignments Creation Tool
When Using the New Grade Book...
Assignment creation is also different. The tool here features much of the same features from previous updates, however there are now more ways to interact with and build activities. It's actually similar to Canvas or Google Classroom in some respects and nearly all of the options are toggleable. It's also possible to see student submissions through this tool as well as student activity. Note that these features are only useable if assignments are built directly into Synergy and not on Canvas - and Canvas currently has far more features available to you.
Other Changes
There are other minor changes throughout Synergy...
Some other things you might notice are additional cosmetic changes, faster loading times (in some places), and an overall cleaner more modern look to Synergy. Currently, these changes are only on the Teacher VUE end of things, but it is possible in the future for features to change for Student and Parent VUE in the future as well.