Welcome to Canvas at Bexley Schools
A committee of teachers and technology advisors recommended that the School District adopt Canvas as a replacement learning management system to Sakai CLE. Teacher feedback was positive, with indications that it is easy to use, does not require considerable time or training to understand or to navigate. On the right are two short promotional videos on Canvas.
Canvas Use
Canvas is implemented K-12 across the district as the premier primary location for course and classroom information. Teachers who are currently using alternate sites will be required to migrate content into the Canvas platform, discontinuing the use of alternate sites for course information. This change will provide students, parents, teachers and community members a consistent experience and location for finding course related information.
K-12 Features in Canvas
State Standards, Parent Co-enrollment, Easy to Use, Mobile Access, Integration with 3rd party tools, Speed Grader, Selective Release of Content. Student view for teachers, Accessibility standards, Cloud Based and numerous support tutorials and guides.
For Teachers
For teachers Canvas provides a location to store, share, assess and collect digital content. Items that are born digital can be submitted digitally, assessed digitally in the system, with feedback returned digitally to the student in the form of notes, grades, audio or video commentary. The platform enables personalized communication with parents and students based on messaging technologies and the types of items in the course. For example if an assignment date changes, the system will then push the notification to the students and parents via their personalized preferred communication methods. Teachers can use the platform to structure their lessons while also acting as an archive of their classroom. The site showcases how lessons and content is organized for students, creating a classroom ePortfolio for teachers.
In addition Canvas has support for ePorfolios for everyone, which could be utilized as a platform supporting the collection and display of evidence for use in the Individual Professional Development Plan process.
For Intervention Specialists
For teachers and classroom aides who provide intervention and other services, access can be established to all the courses connected to students they're supporting. This provides the supporting professional with access to course information collaborating with the classroom teacher to provide services.
Bexley Teacher Comments
Canvas has the potential to provide our world language students with an authentic opportunity to utilize and practice their language skills. Students and instructors will be able to collaborate and engage in learning in an inviting and intuitive environment. Students may build portfolios to demonstrate their proficiency in the target language in real-world scenarios. Instructors may build integrated performance assessments that utilize a wide variety of resources, and provide feedback in one management system.
The fact that students can specify their communication preferences will mean that they can be informed the way they choose on any device they use.
It quickly became evident that this is a much more user-friendly resource than we are currently using with updated capabilities. The video element was particularly intriguing to me, as I can think a tons of ways that I would utilize this in my first grade classroom. It also feels more streamlined, with many elements of what we (teachers) use daily in one visible, easy to access place.
The opportunities provided by Canvas are already exceeding what I had previously hoped a LMS would be able to do. My students are getting reminders about important dates via email - and can opt to get them as texts as well. Knowing that these options will be available for parents if adopted will certainly keep parents more connected with classroom learning. I am thrilled to get started using the Student Portfolio as it will allow us to keep record of student growth in a multitude of media formats!