Last year, Parker students and parents could log on to what was known as NetClassroom, in order to access student classes and transcripts. This August, Parker’s tech office and registrar decided to make a change. They invited Upper School students onto a new portal, where you immediately see a white background and different icons sitting at the top: a calendar icon on the far left, and a brown directory icon on the far right. This is just the home page.

The new portal gives students access to information such as their teacher’s emails, the roster of their classes, and their daily assignments.

Students can see a tab called “Resources,” moreover, which gives them access to platforms such as “The Parker Weekly,” the weekly lunch menu, and upcoming Morning Exercises. There’s an added focus to sports, where members can see the scores of all Parker sports games from the week, as well as the dates and times of future games.

Director of Information Technology Peter Evans has been reflecting on the administration’s goals for the new portal. “The idea is modernizing the whole experience,” Evans said. “Now it can work on phones, iPads, and mobile devices.”

Evans explained what he believes are the significant parts of the portal. “The biggest positives now have been towards there being one place to get everything,” Evans said. “The biggest negative is getting people the information and instructions they need while we are still adding the data there.”

Senior Axel Burlin expressed his relief about replacing the old portal. “It was very ugly, and I only went on there to check grades, which I only did a couple times a year,” Burlin said. “It looks a lot better now, and it’s a lot clearer.”

Sophomore Andy Wessman has similar feelings about the layout change. “Overall it’s a big improvement from the year before,” Wessman said. “I like how it’s the same password from the computer, where it’s easy and accessible. Also how it looks because last year on NetClassroom, it was very discombobulated.”

According to Evans, Parker has been using digital software from a computer system called Blackbaud for over 20 years, which ran things such as the admissions and business offices, alumni connections, budgeting, and financial management.

Blackbaud was used to create NetClassroom, but after some website breakthroughs and the purchase of the company Whipplehill, it was able to create a more modern website platform that is being used by many schools currently, and was the basis of the online portal that Parker started converting to this summer.

Chair of Languages and Cultural Studies Lorin Pritikin is a fan of the technological improvements she will benefit from as a teacher. “I really like the new portal,” Pritikin said, “because it improves the communication between the heads of divisions, and posting on bulletin boards, as well as a very neat clearinghouse for resources for teachers.”

As Parker continues to improve on student life in the digital age, the portal, like the new library, is another example of Parker’s continuing to modernize.

Registrar Matthew McCaw reflected on the increased usefulness and improvement of the portal. “My biggest complaint was that it was really hard to know what students and parents were seeing,” McCaw said. “With the new system, because everyone’s basically a user, it is easy to see what is being shared and what everyone is encountering as they login and logout.”

Another new feature with the portal is the groups icon that appears as a sports jersey and a paint palette inside a circle. This icon leads you to things such as the college counseling database and schedule, and a folder labeled “US office” that has information such as forms and different subject matters discussed under the tab topics.

“The whole business when we have it fleshed out is an easy online tool for students to use to check on grades, schedules, assignments, past grades transcripts,” Evans said. “Basically everything they need to know about their school experience we hope all sits in one place.”