Switching from School Loop to Canvas

While only a handful of teachers piloted Canvas last year, the beginning of this fall semester marked the schoolwide transition into Canvas.
The administration last year said that the transition to Canvas better prepares students for the college environment. In addition to switching into Canvas, the school district created a new SMUHSD email address for all students. The school district will be eliminating the MYAHS email address by the end of the semester to complete the transition into SMUHSD address.

“[The district] were managing eight different domains, one that all faculty and staff were on and then seven other different school’s domains,” said tech coordinator Vince Bravo. “Unfortunately for students that are currently here, you’re a part of the process of switching everyone over into one domain.”

Students are required to their SMUHSD email to log into Canvas. To address any technical difficulties, the administration has implemented ahs_techhelp@smuhsd.org to communicate with any students or parents who require help in the transition.

When the district used School Loop as the main school provider, it was only used for grading and announcement purposes. Transitioning into Canvas, schools are now seeing new opportunities, such as online test taking and online sources used during class.

Teachers and administrators went through a year of training to ease the transition from School Loop to Canvas.“Ms. Elenz-Martin [and I] worked a lot during professional development last year as well as with the district to make sure that teachers knew what was going to be different in the world of canvas,” Bravo said.

Compared to School Loop, teachers say that though Canvas possess a greater number of capabilities and functions, it lacks in the communication department.

“Canvas is a teaching platform where you’re going to be able to submit papers, assignments, exams, and it has a communication functions like grades and emails,” said government and economics teacher, Kevin Nelson, “but it is not currently set up like School Loop where it is an easy to use communication system.”

Transitioning into Canvas, schools are now seeing new opportunities, such as online test taking and online sources used during class.

Instead, administrators tried to find a way to make it easier for students and teachers to communicate faster and easier with their teachers just like School Loop did.

“The bigger problem is that the administrative both of the side of the district, are going to have to build better communication systems to be able to send out emails to parents, emails to kids, [and] being able to have counselors and administrators view grades,” Nelson said. “That’s difficult right now, but the tradeoff is two things; having a teaching platform enables teachers to do that many more things with it.”

For students, switching to Canvas has brought many difficulties and adjustments that might take time to get used to.

“Something that is difficult about Canvas is seeing all the assignments. [It] sometimes gets confusing and a bit overwhelming,” said senior Eucrely Martinez Choy. “Although it is a great opportunity to get a head start on work, it’s also confusing because you see all the work you are supposed to do instead of what is just assigned for that day.”

Canvas may have some issues, but it helps teachers grade smaller tasks and give students feedback a lot quicker than pen and paper would.

Canvas shows the student’s “to-do” list on the right hand corner. If there’s an upcoming due date the assignment will show up. However, this “to-do” list can be filled up when there’s no due date for the assignment.

Canvas may have some issues, but it helps teachers grade smaller tasks and give students feedback a lot quicker than pen and paper would. Small assignments can improve a student’s understanding on a topic during class and teachers would automatically know if the students understood or not.

“I can quickly easily flip through answers and put my own comments and a grade into my grade book,” Bravo said. “I do feel like this quick and easy and efficient way of providing feedback for student learning is super beneficial and School Loop couldn’t do that.”