Sycamore School

"We've used Sycamore Education for six years. Great product!"

Kommentare: Our old SI system was clunky and slow. Sycamore Education revolutionized our daily workload and processes. Highly recommended for private schools.

Vorteile: Ease of use. Customer support. Frequent updates/upgrades. Meets all IS needs for our private school.

Nachteile: Graphics, as well as look & feel could use an update. Wish this product would integrate with our online curriculum.

"Comprehensive Edu Software"

Kommentare: Overall we were happy with Sycamore. I highly recommend them for smaller schools and it may be the right fit for larger schools. I think they just need to evaluate what workflows are most important to them and understand the trade-offs of having a wider than deeper program.

Vorteile: First of all, they have excellent customer service. They really are doing their best to help schools succeed. They have great integrations with google, which for us was one of the primary deciding reasons for going with them. They now have a quality app and more features than most programs have for a fraction of the cost. They also have a REST API which is extremely helpful for expanding the potential of the software.

Nachteile: One of the hard parts about being an educational software is that it is hard to know when to stop developing different​ features and instead focus on making the features they do have into amazing experiences. IMO Sycamore has a broader instead of deeper development philosophy. This is good for small schools that need a comprehensive solution, but it can be frustrating for schools with more users that end up choosing multiple solutions because the overall experience and depth of usability are better. An example of this is how they have 3 different enrollment/admissions portals that they have tried to develop. Instead of making one amazing, they have tried multiple times. Their most recent one is promising, but still,​ isn't​ usable for schools who need all of the features available.

"Sycamore"

Vorteile: There are very little pros, except that I easily reached a customer service rep when I needed help with an issue.

Nachteile: I did not like Sycamore as an LMS. I found its interface to be clunky, filled with unnecessary options, and difficult to navigate. For example, to this day, I still have no idea how to create an assignment so that a student can upload there work. Believe me, I tried to figure it out. Eventually I gave up and used another system. The grade book was another problematic feature. At the end of the semester, it does not show final grades computed with the final exam. You have to go into each individual student and look at there "grade report" to see the end computation. I do not recommend this system. There are much better LMS's available.

"Streamlines School Functions"

Kommentare: Overall I like the product. My school has started using more of the functionality of the software and receiving announcements and other important information has been helpful.

Vorteile: I like the app for my phone. It streamlines my ability to quickly send attendance to our office. I also like the school directory so that I can easily pull up information for any school family.

Nachteile: Sending group emails (batch emails) isn't obvious to me. I wish the email portion seemed more like gmail or other email applications.

"Sycamore enabled us to get into the 21st century by using an online management system. We love it!"

Vorteile: Communication has increased between parents and teachers as grades can be tracked and paper grades don't get lost. It also has provided accountability in that teachers are posting grades on a more timely basis. It allows consistency between grades and years. The system is very powerful; customer service is probably the most helpful that I have encountered. I love the ability to create transcripts and that these are kept on the system. It tracks attendance much better than we were doing previously. The medical logs have been helpful. Doing online admissions has taken us to a new level as well.

Nachteile: The system isn't as intuitive as I would like. Because I have worked with it several years, it's much easier now and people end up coming to me to figure out how to do specific things with it.
I have been frustrated a bit b/c it doesn't allow for creative flexibility (for instance transcripts don't have a lot of space for extra activities) or for things that aren't the same in different countries. We have worked around a lot of the barriers, and Sycamore has been very helpful to put things on the list of potential fixes.