Goodbye PowerSchool, Hello Canvas

The school’s newest software transition

Goodbye PowerSchool, Hello Canvas

Ford Legg and Danielle Brennan

After a more than a decade, PowerSchool will be phased out and Canvas will take its place as the school’s grading and course content platform. The decision to switch came with news that PowerSchool’s parent company would be shutting it down after acquiring a different one, Schoology. After some slow back-and-forth with the company, the school was unable to get a demo for this new site, and decided to access all of its options for a replacement platform since a transition to Schoology would be jarring, regardless. Their top pick? Canvas: the learning management system used by most colleges and universities and praised for its streamlined structure, tech support, and crowd-sourced course content accessibility. Canvas trumps PowerSchool with these helpful features – but how will students transition smoothly to the new platform, and what can it do for them?

The school is running six workshops to inform faculty on how to use Canvas, and has selected some of them to be ambassadors for the platform. These faculty members will be resources for others to answer questions and provide other information or tips and tricks. Meanwhile, Canvas is being updated with information from Veracross and PowerSchool.