Beyond the Canvas: Tom Christiansen

Tom, thanks for coming. We're here today on Beyond the Canvas where we share the people, the stories shaping education, and you are one of those people. So, I'm Gems. I am the regional director for K-12 here at Instructure across APAC, and I'm really excited to have you on Beyond the Canvas with me today. So can you please introduce yourself? Excited to be here. So Tom Christiansen is my name.

I'm currently head of innovation at Mentone Grammar in Melbourne, Victoria. I'm having a wonderful wonderful time working with Canvas and, all of our platforms here and, yeah, working with every faculty that I can come across. So, very exciting times, to be talking to you as well today, Gems. I love the fact that your title has head of innovation. Right? Because I think, you know, something that I love about how progressive you are personally and your love of technology and the innovation aspect is you know, I can remember one of our very first conversations, and I was just mind blown.

Like, I walked away. And every time we talk, I'm always upbeat and uplifted and really excited because I think that you match my level of passion. But when you talk about innovation, you also have, like, a bit of a minimalist teaching approach. Like, I think what was that thing that you referred to yourself as? Not a tourist? Not an education expert was my my description there, and I think a minimalist educator. I mean, I think we're all standing on the shoulders of giants in in really any industry.

But in education, I'm pulling in all of the presentations I've been to, all the professional learning, all the colleagues that I've worked with, the curriculum that I've come across that's mostly been or often been developed by other teachers. I I think it's, me trying to find ways to connect all that together. And, that's what I love to do with curriculum design is working out the best way to do that and hopefully help teachers be themselves in class and have those, tools at their fingertips to be able to deliver the best lessons possible. And that's what really excites me about it. I love fixing problems.

And when a, you know, a teacher comes back to me in my role here at school to say, oh, that worked really well, and it was really easy. I'm gonna do it again, you know, next year or next week. I think that's kind of the the proof being in the pudding of success. Yeah. I think also, like, I I I I just got goosebumps, so that obviously resonates.

But I think you you really hit the nail on the head when you're like, you know, yeah. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants, and I'm pulling in from everything that I've previously learned. Isn't that what about us as individuals really encompasses anyway? Right? Because there are certain things like I can I know my u nine maths teacher taught me x y and zed, but I went to work and I learned it through someone else? Like, I I was working in an ice cream shop and I filled up a ice cream jar and then put the sorry, a milkshake jar and then put a scoop of ice cream in it and obviously it overflowed. And my boss went, Emma, don't you understand the theory of displacement? And well, I've never heard that term before in my life, but hey, I just learned it. Right? And I think it's the tapestry of what we collect along the years, how that stays with us as to shapes who we are and what drives our passion.

So speaking of which, I wanna know how you came into this role. Right? Because in today's session, we're gonna be talking about, obviously yeah. Canvas obviously underpins things that you do, and that's why we're both here. It's a common denominator. But I really wanna understand about you, what drives you, what where you come from, and the impact.

So how did you get to be Tom, who's the head of innovation at your school? I mean, I think I kind of fell into teaching, which is a a common story, but I loved it right from the start. So my mom was a teacher, and, I think I was a little bit unsure whether that's what I wanted to do for a period of time. And I studied, logistics management and commerce subjects, and they didn't really click with me too much. But, when I started my education degree, I was studying maths and English. So they're my two teaching areas.

And it was very odd. I don't know many other maths and English teachers, and I've taught those at at secondary level for quite some time. But what I realized is even though I I didn't always have a love of learning at school, I really developed that as I as I became an adult, I guess, and I still have that, you're talking about displacement. I was just chatting to a staff member about Archimedes who who ran through the streets. I think that was him with Eureka of, discovering displacement or researching that at least, the theory of it at least.

And, I just I really love learning about lots of things in education, whether it's humanities or geography or, business, politics, whatever it is that we we cover at a school. It's always really interesting. And those moments where students get it and they understand it and probably struggle the most about in my role is it's taken me out of the classroom a little bit, and I'm glad that I get to work with all these faculties. But my favorite part of the day is when I'm in a classroom with students, showing them something, they understand it and kind of move forward through some sort of concept. Their their progress is the best part of any any day.

So, yeah, that's kind of how I got into this role. I've just always loved technology. Again, I've never, studied a technology, degree. I'm not a coding expert or anything like that, but I've designed websites. I've made maths videos.

I've learned how to self edit videos and do all these bits and pieces. I just love how technology can bring so many things together and make life easy for so many people. And sometimes it can give us some headaches around what we're doing. But I think ultimately if we're going to improve as schools and as, as educators, technology is the way forward to do that. It's the way that we can buy that time back, share and collaborate and get better and better at what we're doing, because I think the challenges that students face and that we face in supporting students are just going to become more and more complex.

So we wanna do what we can, and that is owning our our delivery of education as as best we possibly can. And removing those distractions, I know that, like, in one of our previous discussions, you've talked about sort of, you know, you you mentioned it then, sort of giving the teachers back time to do what they wanna do. And I think, you know, any way that you can remove. Look. I there are some people that like admin, and there are some people that, like, that drives them and they really enjoy that.

And I love those people, but I am not one of them. Admin is sort of one of those unnecessary evil things that I have to partake in. Right? Oh, sorry. Necessary evil. There you go.

Can't even can't even sympathise. And so I think that that's how, you know, we've previously discussed how you're trying to remove that barrier to entry for your teachers and just really set them up for success. And that was something that stood out for me. I think also, you know, you've previously shared about your experience at school. Do you wanna tell me a little bit about that? Because I I share the same sentiment, and I think many do.

There's no Yeah. Yeah. This feels a little unfair, to be honest, but my, my motivation in education was seeing some great teachers. I had some absolutely outstanding teachers, but seeing the ones that, I guess, maybe had lost the passion or or were not particularly interested in their curriculum area really frustrated me. And I, was motivated to become a teacher in part because I thought I reckon I could do that better.

And I don't know whether I've achieved that yet, but, that that's just what I love about it so much. I think it's really hard to stand in front of a group of students and not kind of do your best most of the time. What can be stressful is when you're trying to pull together, you know, fifty different things or you're running a YouTube and it's not working or the ads haven't been stripped because it's not embedded in Canvas. Those things can really get in the way of a lesson because, they're those little things where students are in and out and they're they're distracted. Their cognitive load is drained before you even started any sort of learning.

And that's just, yeah, really what I love about what I like to do in education. I try to make it as fun as I can and and interesting, and I think there's just so much fun stuff out there to use. That's what we wanna draw on. And, not everyone has to be across every part of it, but we can all pull together in the same way and and hopefully make our lives a little bit easier. I think the fact that you talked about, you know, just those little small cues where you have that opportunity to lose students, I was one of those.

Like, I was out down a rabbit hole. You know, if YouTube had to be anything, I would have been looking at twenty seven cat videos even before the teacher had said, you know, heads down, thumbs up, because I was a shiny thing, and I'm gone. Right? And I think that's sort of something really great that I like about Canvas is that it removes the opportunity for those distractions and keeps sort of kids all in one space as long as as well as your teachers all in one space, you know, with our integrations. And I think for you and how you're leveraging it at your school, you're using it across so many different years as well. Can you talk to me a little bit about that, please? Yeah.

We've probably looked at it as a primary and secondary model to an extent in what we want to deliver in this space. So our initial rollout was getting assignments right, getting the information in that we wanted and structuring everything so that our grading was accurate, the feedback was correct to, the relevant, parents and students. And then we've started building content. And that's where I'm really excited about where we're going now because we're getting into the more okay, well, let's get creative and see what we can actually do here. But so the secondary model, we are developing that independence in students.

So as we build curriculum, they may not be ready to engage in in the deep learning of something at the start of a week, but they know that that's a page or an announcement or some information available to them at any point in that week. So it could be language features in English, and they kind of get it on the Monday. But then by Friday, they're actually ready to revisit that and say, actually, I think I can I can really lock that in and understand how to then use it in an essay or discuss these in regards to the text we're looking at? I think that's what's exciting about it is we are developing that independence in our students. And I think at private schools, that's often a case of of, students feel like we we support them very well, but they might go to university and struggle to to have that independence. I think that's really important that we that we cultivate that and promote that through the school and give them that really easy access.

So, again, they're not getting distracted on the way to the content. They are going straight there, and they know exactly where to find it. So we've worked really hard on the logic of how we've structured everything. Everything's color coded and organized in in the same way across all of our courses. So you can really bring up any sort of page that we have, and it all looks the same and and works the same way.

So, again, I think students' cognitive load in that space is reasonably low. The other thing we've been using is Blueprints. So I'm a big fan of Blueprints. I was, it's a challenge. There's lots of different ways that you can set up up your Canvas instances.

So sections are perfectly fine and duplicating courses, but I like the organizational understanding that we have of how blueprints work. They're these live courses that are running year on year on year, and it's just a building block, and everything we put in there is available to students. And we're really just attaching classes to those those courses as we go. So, yeah, I just really like that idea that we we have this, structure to Canvas that drives the logic behind what we wanna try and achieve. And, realistically, if teachers want to share content with their classes, there's ways they can do that just in their class.

But ultimately, they're going to the blueprint to build content, and then it's just automatically shared. And, you know, I'll talk about that later. Maybe it's probably my favorite thing about Canvas. But, yeah, that's that's a big part of it. And then in primary, we're just touching on how to get students into using Canvas a bit more.

So, we changed our reporting and grade systems recently. So Canvas was was a big part of that. But now we're starting to say, can we get students logging in with QR codes, going to a point, taking them directly, again, lowering that cognitive load, they click a link or scan something, it goes straight to where they need to go, submitting that work and then having teachers provide feedback in written, audio, verbal, image, markup, all those things that we have available to us. It shouldn't be restricted because that's the only thing someone knows how to do. It should be what's the task demand the most of, and that's what we're gonna try and always aim for best practice in that space.

That makes my heart so happy to hear. Right? Because, you know, Blueprints, again, likewise, is one of my favorite things. Right? It is an absolute no brainer. If you've got a really cool shell or a core of a course that you want to repeat, also the version control and, you know, updates and just providing teachers removing the administration burden as well as giving them a shell to actually, okay, guys. Here you go.

You can go off and, you know, make some edits should you wish, but here's something provided to you. And then just continuing that out because, I think if you've got something that you've built and developed and you know that it's cool and it's working, then let's replicate that. Right? And also the thing you talked about with K-12, because sometimes we hear that sort of, you know, great that you're using it for high school. But when it comes to those younger years, sometimes I'm hearing that people are a little bit like, yeah, Canvas isn't great for that. And, again, I think what it sounds like is you're setting your students up for that just continuation of a platform to see them their whole way through.

Right? Because if they stay with your school all the way up to year twelve and then even to further their education, most of our unis are playing on Canvas too. So when they log in, it's just like, oh, Canvas. Cool. I know how to use this. And I guess given the features and functionality of being able to strip some of that back for the younger years and also the integrations that, you know, can support students at that level and meet the student where they're at, I think, you know, you've got innovation in your title for a reason, Tom.

So nailing it, high five to you. I guess sort of you touched on the blueprint structure and and why you enjoy that because it offers structure. But we've also talked about sort of grade books and what that looks like and why you kind of enjoy grade books throughout your your canvas. Yeah. So the the structure that we can provide through Blueprints, I guess, protects staff from breaking anything.

So we can give them that confidence to say, basically, you can go into any of these assignments. You won't be able to change the points or potentially the weighting of those assignment groups. But that's a that's an important thing to maintain because we want that similarity and consistency in that space across the subjects. What that means is from a teacher's perspective that maybe isn't particularly confident, they kind of know that they can't really break anything. They can go and do what they want and try some things.

And it's not really gonna ruin anything in their classes or, you know, mock up the the display of grades for their students across the board. So, I think that's that structure that the blueprints helped us do is we can protect a little bit more, but also provide that flexibility that each individual teacher can still have their own space. We're not saying they have to have, you know, a shared discussion with the whole cohort. They can just have their class there or sections or whatever it is that they need to achieve. But, yeah, that that grade book is a little bit locked down for us just to make sure that, again, we're delivering that consistently across across all courses.

And, again, I think the blueprint's been beneficial because if a change is required, towards the end of a semester or, because there's been some sort of interruption and there's, an assessment's been dropped or something like that, we can change that in the blueprint, sync it out to the classes, and it doesn't really have any impact on the teachers or students at that point. So we can have that live update throughout the year. I just think it it's we've not had a single issue with it. Every sync has always worked. I've never had to contact, Canvas support to get get any assistance in that space.

So, yeah, lots of lots of positives there. But, again, yeah, I think self have that confidence to say, I can do whatever I feel like in this class, and I'm not gonna damage anything that's that's absolutely mission critical. And I I love that. Right? Because, also, you're giving teachers sort of license too, but they know that there are boundaries and that they're not going to sort of, you know, destroy and blow the whole thing up. Also, something that I really love about our previous conversations is both your and my passion about terrible looking courses.

Right? So, I think, you know, something that I quickly identified through early conversations between you and I was just how you're trying to level that up. And you're not just sort of doing it throughout your school. You yeah. Talk to me a little bit more about that because it's better coming from you. I was, I mean, I was terrible at art at school.

I think I I frustrated my art teachers much of the time. I did have a work sell at a at a charity auction. I'm not sure if it was my parents buying it, and the money did go to charity. My art teacher was as surprised as I was that someone had purchased, my output. But, I think I I love the logic of design.

I think it's really important to have consistency across what what schools are doing so that when a student looks at one page in English, it's not particularly different to what the page logic looks like in, say, a maths course or whatever it is that's being covered. Embedded videos of the right size, images to, next to text, all those things are really, really important. So, one of my favorite things I've had at Mentone Grammar is getting the branding guide and just having the set colors that I want to follow. It makes it really easy for me and again for our staff to have that confidence to say we're using, I think it's triple zero a three d is our blue, and maybe blue. So I've kinda memorized all these colors because, it's it's kind of this safety net for me.

You know, a student logs in and sees hot pink on lime green backgrounds. I think it's it's a lot to take in. I think we we really need to think about that as schools and make sure that we're consistently doing that. So, you know, I'm looking at ways to to help schools do that, I guess, at the moment and and, develop structures that will allow them to consistently deliver in the same way. And, again, potentially start sharing content, across Canvas Commons.

I think that's a a little bit of an untapped resource at this point, and I wanna start working on some some opportunities in that space, over the next year or two. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that was gonna be my next question. Like, Canvas Commons, I completely agree.

It is sort of really that hidden gem, pardon the pun. It it it that is really untapped. It has so much opportunity, and I really love the fact that something whilst I've been away and coming back, I feel that our little community that we've got is a lot more collaborative, and people wanna learn from each other. And people are happy to share and say, hey. This worked for me, and I've done this.

And did you know? Or hey, Tom. What are you doing in this space? Because, you know, innovation seems to be your bag. And help me with this. Does pink go with purple, and should I use this font? Absolutely not. Use the use the accessibility filter there.

But, also, sort of when we're talking about that collaboration, we have our Canvas community as you know. Right? And so lately, I've been stalking that, and I've just set up my profile, which is gem k twelve hype girl. And I noticed that that sort of has died off a little bit, so I'm trying to, like, you know, restart that trend. So I think that linking not only obviously Canvas Commons and what you're doing, but also building that community out a little bit more. So I don't know whether or not you've got some really cool teachers in your school that you can encourage.

And you've probably got a profile, so I'm gonna find you and track you down. And I think also from this, you know, I'd really like to see some of the content that you've developed and that you've shared. And I know that we've previously discussed you being a maths teacher and some of the cool things that you're doing in the background. Can you share that, please? Yeah. So I I started making maths videos, just recording kind of my screen, and and, I do I kind of make them a little bit silly.

I think some of them were made during the lockdowns, and I'm not sure that, I'm particularly proud of of some of the the things I was putting in there and the silly hats I was wearing. But, I think that can be fun in just about anything in education. And I could go back to English and say if you're looking at poetry, you could start with something like a Bob Dylan song or some sort of song and lyrics where you're still applying that analysis that you want. But with the the music, you can pick up on the tone or a student that's struggling to get into and understand poetry. You can have a bit of a stepping stone in what you're doing there.

And I think maths is the same, enabling students to go and learn a concept when they're ready for it or revisit something. Classrooms, particularly in maths, move so quickly. The curriculum, there's a lot to cover. You know, we constantly talk about it as teachers of jumping between lesson by lesson by lesson, and we don't have a great chance to review and connect between what we're doing. I think we can empower students to do that through these systems.

They can rewatch a video from earlier in the week. They can engage in some sort of online quiz, as an exit ticket or do that later in the week as well. So again, that's that consistency. So a video, some set questions from the textbook, but I've been putting in these exit tickets for every lesson because I was struggling to, drive through that through my teaching. I know that that's an important thing to do as an educator, but I was I was forgetting.

I might not summarize the class all that effectively, but I could have this exit ticket to get students to just judge whether they understood the concept. Can they factorize, solve, whatever it is that they're trying to do for that lesson? It was it was really great to do that. So, yeah, that's kind of where, where I'm using some of the fun of canvas. And again, like the fact that there's just the video there, there's no ads attached to it. They're not getting distracted by suggested videos on the side or at the bottom.

I think canvas does a huge amount of heavy lifting there. And, though I love those ten gentle ideas that we've discussed as well. So we spoke about, how to adults was a unit that we put together at the end of last year. And again, there was staff here. So Lucy Fairhol did this huge amount of work to put together this this unit, and we just really built it into Canvas.

We built PowerPoints using AI. It was it was a bit of a kind of rush to get going. There's no real curriculum attached to it as far as the Victorian curriculum is concerned, but we wanted students to go through the process of buying insurance and learning about pet insurance. And what does it take if you have a loan? And how much does that car cost if you if you take out a loan for it? All those little bits of what do people earn at certain brackets of age and what's minimum wage? All those little bits and pieces that I mean, I'm still learning about half of that stuff. I don't know how to do my taxes all that effectively.

But we just got students starting off on that, and I think that's the kind of unit that isn't something that we just do at this school and has a context here and how we teach our curriculum. I think that's a universal context across Australia and potentially even more broadly than that. So that's the kind of stuff I'm really interested in starting to explore is how do we have these these side projects that, fit for everybody even though maybe we can connect them to some sort of Victorian or Australian curriculum. But I I kind of almost think it doesn't matter. It's what something that someone wants to do.

And even tech courses, we get a lot of students coming to Mentor and Grammar for the at year seven. So they're they're new to the school at that point, and they've come from iPads. And they probably don't have the skills that we might expect from from young people with actual laptops or devices. That's really challenging. I feel for them.

I think they've they've come through a generation where computers generally just work or they have someone that can help them all the time. We're not great at training them on how to do that sometimes and, and giving them the tools and advising their parents on the right decisions around that space as well. We get a lot of, students buying their own laptops and their, their gaming laptops, and it's not really what the parent intended. But, you know, there's a lot of people that are very scared by all that technology. And again, I'd I'd love to work on courses that are delivering that for students and parents to have that confidence around around technology and and AI as well.

So, yeah, I'd be happy to talk more about that. But, yeah. Oh, seriously, I know some adults that I wanna enroll in your how to adult courses. Like, it is it is ridiculous. But, also, that's like you know, some of that stuff is assumed knowledge.

Right? And it's breaking down those barriers. You know, you touched on we've had kids that have come and started, gone from an iPad school. My son started into a laptop school after being an iPad kid, and I asked, are you supporting my child with I can teach him so much, but I also don't know how you want him to use the laptop in the school. What does this look like? You know? And they were like, no. I'm like, oh.

Yeah. So how are we setting my child up for success? And, again, as a parent who gets tech, I can only imagine the parents that don't get tech. So, you know, I feel like already those kids are a little bit behind because they haven't had access to that. And then also to your point, you know, a lot of that stuff can be chucked up in Canvas Commons. You know? Yes.

It shouldn't be written to a curriculum, but that is stuff that I think is really valuable to learn. And so, look, I've enroll me. Chuck that up in comments please. Share it and I will enroll myself and my child. But I also think you know we're talking about digital literacy.

You know you have teachers probably at your school that computers weren't a thing when they first started their career and then they've had to adapt. That's a scary thing and we're asking people to come out of their comfort zone and also the parents. Same again. Right? That's a big part of what we're doing with our teachers as well is trying to give them that confidence to engage in learning material, whether it's with our Microsoft platforms or Canvas or really anything. But they can do that at their own speed and and when they determine they want to engage in that.

I think, it's very stressful when you're sitting in a room of twenty other people and everyone else seems to understand what's going on, and you're saying, I don't know what these systems are. I don't know how to click there. I don't know what that does. I think those people can then go away, engage in a video that's in their context that that is at the right stage for their learning, and they can actually start at the ground up and and own it themselves. Because that that is super stressful for anyone in any subject area, I think, to be thrown in the deep end.

You know, there's a reason we don't do it to our students. But we seem to kind of start doing it to adults all of a sudden. I don't quite know why that's the case. Yeah. It's kind of like, oh, you'll figure it out.

It's it's not like you're an adult. You should know this. Right? And, again, it comes back to that assumed knowledge piece. Something else that sort of I really love, we've talked about before, is ensuring that sort of the lesson plans and the content land every time. Now we briefly touched on this, but I just want you to dive a little bit deeper because I think it's really, really important because we've talked about, yeah, cool.

You've done it here, but later in the day. Can you just drill a little bit? Yeah. I think, having a really logical, organized, structured system that a teacher can kind of fall back on as a bit of a safety net. There's always different things happening in the classroom, and it's really challenging. Sometimes just managing the students or, you know, there's all these problems going on or they're stressed, tired, their energy levels are low or high.

I think having a, you know, I think when you start off as a teacher, you write out lesson plans and how you want the lesson to go and you break it up into minute breaks. Teachers stop doing that at some point and just rely on their skills, which is great. I think that's really important. But having this safety net of, say, something like Canvas and structured curriculum and a logic around what we're trying to achieve, The students know what they're trying to get out of the lesson. The teacher knows, and the teacher's then able to make those dynamic decisions throughout the class without having to think, oh, what were my set questions for this? How do I engage in deep learning here? They can have some questions to draw on and and, I guess, live read the class as they're going, and they'll have to think completely on the fly.

They're just drawing on all that information at their fingertips. And, that's what really excites me. I think students can leave feeling like they understand what has been covered in that class and can do it and can engage in it in some standard. Or if they can't, they can go and revisit that or talk to the teacher and follow-up from there. I think nearly everyone's probably had that experience of an assessment at any stage of school where you sit down and it's like you've never learned any of that content.

That shouldn't really happen. That's that's a responsibility of both the student and the teacher to say, in these little check ins as we go through a unit, we talk about formative assessment a lot. You know, I think that's really important to keep revisiting those things. And again, it's just that safety net that we can deliver that for both the student and the teacher. And that's my hope is the more we build out this content, the better it gets and the more exciting it is and the more interesting it is for both parties that, they wanna go to those the the honeypot of Canvas that has everything that they want, at any given time.

I think, you know, hearing you say that, I can remember I was the first one in my year to get my piece. Right? And so I'd come back, and we had English. And I remember walking into the class and mister Lambert looking at me and seeing me just exploding with excitement. And he's like, right, Gemma. I know you're not gonna shut up.

Everyone's gonna ask you questions, so come up here for five minutes and just answer the questions. That was him managing. Right? And back then, I didn't think about and that penny has only just dropped. But I distinctly remember that moment that mister Lambert was like, for god's sake, just get up here, get it out of your system, and then we can work. Yeah.

Again, he didn't have canvas to fall back on. You know, but that really just sort of to the point of gauging the class. You know? They could have gone out and had a water fight at lunchtime, and then everyone's come Yep. Hyperactive. Or, you know, mister Base has just dropped something, and they've all, like, really disappointed.

Whatever it may be. Yeah. I had never thought to take those considerations in, but that, you know, our young people are just people like us that get affected by everyday things. Right? But having Canvas just as that guide, as that anchor point to bring everyone back is I've never thought of it that way. Thank you.

And that was the, I think that's what we were talking about last time was the, the same delivery or or outcome. The students feel like at the end of that lesson, they achieved what they needed to achieve, but you could have a low, medium, high, activity at the end of that lesson to say, you know, if the class is a bit flat, let's do this one. Oh, okay. They're about in the middle bit of collaboration we can do here. But if we want a high energy lesson, go for this.

And it could all be in the one location. And, teachers, you know, I've had that in my teaching where you run a a lesson and do something interesting, and it goes really well one year. And then the next year or with another class, it just falls flat on its face. The lesson doesn't work. And it's about when the day when it wasn't the day, what was the content that you're trying to achieve? All these things factor into that.

I kind of feel like every lesson can kind of achieve all of those, and the teacher can just make that judgment call whenever they determine to do that. That's something I've been thinking about recently is how do we make that that kind of universal and have almost a template across the school to say, hey, this is how we're gonna do these types of activities, whether it's low, medium, high energy or the type of learning that you're engaging in, or are we just gonna do a bit of a content lesson? Yeah, again, trying to have a bit of a space for everything that we wanna deliver in in the school. And I think, again, it just talks to how you're supporting the teachers. Right? Because teachers have a hard enough job as it is. So if we can remove any of that additional burden and just really provide them with those additional resources and tools, so as they can do and I think it comes back to what you talked about at the beginning is being a minimalist teacher.

I think, you know, your concept and your thought process around that is quite remarkable. Right? But I think it's just because, you know, you've put it into terms that I I understand, but at the core of it, it's just doing what teachers do best and what they wanna wake up and do every day, which is teach and shape these young people and set them up for success so as they can meet their potential. Yeah? Yep. Yep. And, I mean, maybe that's what I mean, but I've never quite even understood what I mean by minimalist teacher.

But even in the lesson that, you know, when you things start going wrong in a lesson where you had a plan as to where you wanted to get to and it's not working, it's so frustrating as a teacher. And I think the students pick up on that and it can just be, you know, a really, really tough lesson to get through. Giving people that space or teachers that space to be able to make those decisions as they go is just, yeah, so important, as they, yeah, as they move through the curriculum. Because, again, there's there's so much to cover and it can be complicated and you're constantly wanting to check whether you've you've done it enough and you've covered enough information. It's a lot to think about as a teacher.

And I think when I'm in a class, I guess I want to just be as present as I can in that moment. That's It's probably my favorite part of the day, honestly, because I don't get all the emails coming in, and I don't have to worry about all the the big ticket items that need to work. I'm I'm just present with those students, and my whole goal is to deliver what I need to deliver, which is, yeah, usually a favorite of even though it's maths and most people would disagree with me. Well, I think I've shared. I fondly remember missus Booker who bribed me with Kit Kats.

They were stale, but I still accepted them, and it worked. It's the little things, isn't it? I think also, you know, when we talk about innovation. Right? So, again, Canvas is just a tool throughout your school, but, also, Canvas has the ability to integrate with so many other tools. And as you know, this little thing called Gen AI or Gem AI as I affectionately call it, you know, people in education were saying that, oh, no. We're so against it.

Or, yeah. No. Actually, let's explore it. Right? It's kind of one of those things. Kids are gonna use it.

Right? Also, I think it kind of works to the way that I see it is critical thinking. Like, my my son has learning difficulties. Right? And I can remember him using speech to text on his iPad And the teacher's going, well, he shouldn't be doing that. And I'm like, okay. Well, tell me a time in the future where he is not gonna have access to technology.

And if that's supporting his learning, you know, yes, it's probably not fantastic. But if it's meaning that he's understanding the concepts and is able to explain them back to Siri so she can type them out, then for me, that's a win. Can you talk to me about sort of like how you're adopting other tech throughout the school and where that fits and Yeah. It's really I mean, it's a really big challenge at the moment. I think it's moving so quickly that I I think everyone feels a little behind the eight ball with AI.

We don't necessarily know where it is going. But we've been building some AI active units of work where we're giving those students the prompts and giving them an opportunity to provide feedback on how effective those prompts are. Again, just by clicking this button, and they can say, oh, this didn't really work for me. Here's my my new prompt that was better. So they're kind of developing their own AI engagement because you never quite know what students are doing, but it depends on what the goal is.

So we had a science unit where students were really just researching, food webs and another a number of animals and where they fit in the food web. And AI's ability to pull all of that information in context for the student at that age group together very quickly was really impressive. And the difference of that is they would have been googling every individual animal. So they're doing the same thing, but by doing it in this way, it's getting some really interesting information. We try and use Copilot as much as we can just because it provides those references.

So I get really anxious when AIs are producing information and we don't know where it's coming from. We do that sometimes. You know, ChatGPT is still very accurate. I think it's big enough that that we trust it to an extent. But I love that in Copilot, if a student's excited by something, they can go and, research it further.

Yeah. Look. I love using AI. I think we we have to train students in in how to use it. It is it is there.

They're gonna do it really badly if we don't educate them on it. There's no real way of stopping them all the time. But then assessments become a real battle. We're trying to work out ways to teach students effective use. And I think that the we're seeing you go through a school.

They understand that they really need to be writing their own responses and developing those and learning from them and submitting those to teachers. And sometimes the middle years can be a bit challenging in that respect, but they can still use AI for a lot of really great research. So, yeah, that's kind of these these dedicated active units that are driving students to better practice in that respect, I think, is is working fairly well. And, again, we're we're just learning how that works at this stage. And maybe it'll end up being at some bot that we develop ourselves, but, that's kind of what we're doing for the moment.

And then other than that, we love using Canva, which is confusing a little bit with Canva within Canvas. So I love Canva as an integration, and we're a click for you school as well. So, again, we can share a lot of, films and resources through QlikView directly into Canvas announcements or pages. It's very easy to add those those connections between Canvas and, QlikView. And we have lots of teachers doing that.

And in fact, since we, implemented Canvas, we've seen an uptick in QlikView, even though I've probably not really promoted that across the school as much as I I could have. I think there's just been a natural connection that teachers are delivering that students effectively. And we're starting to see that increase in use. So, yeah, we're using lots of different integrations. I'm sure there's other ones.

I mean, GIFs are always great to add to announcements. I'm not sure that's an integration, but that's just something I tend to do. Yeah. So we're, we're trying to find different ways to deliver things in fun ways. Ed, Eduperfect, Educationperfect.

Ed Rolo, we're, we're doing so many things, connecting all the different resources we have. But again, like I said before, making Canvas that honeypot of bringing it all together from a student's perspective, they should only be going to one location to access that content. Even if it's diving out to other things, that should be the starting point every single time. So, yeah, we're just kinda dabbling in that space and and slowly building our resources and connections across our curriculum. I love hearing that right because, again, something that I always say is Canvas should be the foundational, you know, platform where everything feeds into that and, you know, meeting every learner where they're at.

And, also, you know, I think with the use of LTIs and I had someone say to me that, ed techs are dead. This is, a little while ago, and I was like, no. No. They're not. And they're not going to.

Right? Because the thing is something new is gonna come out and, you know Yep. I love the fact that everyone is constantly innovating and exploring new ways and implementing and integrating new tools into their school. And nine times out of ten, it's teachers who are finding it and talking about it in, you know, collaboration points and discussions and what that looks like. So, you know, I think the fact that teachers are teaching teachers, it just makes my heart really happy. And it comes back to that sort of Canvas community point is what can we do to build this out and how can we spread that word, which is what we're doing here with Beyond the Canvas.

Right? And I just really wanna thank you for coming on today because every conversation that we have, I always walk away going, oh my gosh. There is another example of how Canvas is you know, everyone that I speak to is using it slightly different, but the outcome is to build great student outcomes and support teachers. I think that covers it. I mean, I, just wanna keep advocating for the joy of learning. I think keeping it interesting and different.

And, you know, when I go back to my time at school, we'd read Macbeth in class and then analyze it. And it was the same for a whole term. And I love Shakespeare. I'm, I'm a huge, admirer of all the works. And I've, I've read a lot of those, those plays and seen a number of them as well.

And they're really, I think they're a great thing to study, a great opportunity for learning, but that repetition can be broken up with some, some really interesting ways of delivering different curriculum. So, that's what I always strive to do. I'll, I'll plug another, another YouTube. So there's, thug notes, I think it's called on YouTube, but he does these great video analysis of Shakespearean plays and famous novels and texts. They're so much fun.

They're really good content as well. There's so much great stuff on the Internet. And, you know, to say EdTech is struggling or or or dying, the you just have to see a student try and Google information and how much they struggle to find relevant and accurate information. They are they are not great at determining what is true, false, correct, relevant to them. I think that's where we need to be really clear in in what we're trying to deliver and saying to students that they can trust what we're delivering and and have that confidence that it's gonna be hopefully a bit interesting.

And they can they can then deep dive into some different sections. So, yeah, that's been a pleasure to pleasure to be on, and I hope I haven't rambled too much. No. You haven't. Don't go anywhere.

You are not off the hook yet. We are gonna do my hidden gems so my question for you first one is what did you want to be when you grow up? I think I was the most nervous about these questions but I think I wanted to be a professional sportsman. I just always loved sport. I think that's what I thought about. Probably soccer, but, I was never probably tall or big enough for for AFL, but, you know, I always loved that as well.

Hockey, tennis, it was really a bit of everything, to be honest. Badminton, I ran the badminton program at my old school and loved that. So, I just loved sport, and I would have probably picked anything if if I could have gone pro, but I sadly didn't have the strength, skill, or speed to do any of those things. But, I think that was my real motivator through school. I never I don't know.

I was not not good at planning, for for my future. I don't think. But, I had a I think I was always a bit of a jack of all trades. So my maths and English side of things is probably a reflection of that. I didn't have one thing I was outstanding at, so I wasn't going to be an engineer or, going to, literature or something like that.

I don't know. I couldn't really think of what what I wanted to do. So, yeah, I've kinda liked that I've got to do a bit of everything in in my job these days. Yeah. I love that.

I think also, you know, you probably could go and be a sports commentator. I think you have really sort of great voice for that. Like, you know, obviously, not a Richie Benno, but I could obviously hear you commentating on sports. Maybe badminton. Is that an Maybe badminton.

It could be. I mean, I don't think anyone could be the Richie Benno, but, he was he was one of the all time greats. But, yeah. Yeah. That's very kind of you to say that a voice for radio gems.

I won't take offense. I promise. Please do not. Please do not. My next one, if you could have a superpower, what would it be? So this is gonna come across as, one of those job interview questions where I'm saying I actually work too hard.

That's my weaknesses. I work too hard. So this is gonna come across as that. But, if I could take a pill or if I could just not sleep but still be rested, so just awake all the time, I would one hundred percent sign up for doing that. There's so much interesting stuff in the world.

There's books to read. There's movies to watch. There's just so much to do. That would be my superpower. I'd love to not have to sleep and, and just be able to engage in anything I felt like and and do stuff and build things and learn how to become a carpenter.

Maybe when AI takes over, I can I can, you know, have some skills to actually allow allow me to contribute to society than, than, yeah, with carpentry or whatever I need to do? So, yeah, I think that would be my my superpower. I think that's a bit of a boring one. Flying, it also would be pretty good, but there's I don't know. Everyone, there's there's negatives for anything I come up with here. So No.

I I I would absolutely sign up for your superpower. If that was the thing, I would sign up to be a a mutant non sleeper. Because to your point, there is just so much to do, and I don't feel like I have enough time. Like, my brain is constantly doing this, but what if but what if? Oh, there's a fluffy dog. Like, I wanna you know, that is my ADHD, but I absolutely agree with you.

I would be down for that superpower. And lucky last, what do you love most about Canvas? I think I love how easy it is to share with other teachers. So one person can do something really amazing and so many people can access that. And, again, I think we've barely touched on what Canvas Commons can do. I think that's such a powerful platform that that is a little bit of an untapped resource, and I'm excited about that in the future.

But even within a school, driving that better practice for staff where I can build something, teachers can use it, students can engage with it, the the flow on effect. And if you start kind of thinking of that extrapolation or the exponential curve of of improvement that can be made, it's just so exciting. I think we we need to help each other as teachers. Like I said at the at the start, I think, education and teaching is becoming more and more challenging, whether that's with with parents, with students, the challenges that they're facing. I mean, social media is a massive problem for them.

We as teachers need to help each other out. And one of the ways we can do that is collaborating as well as we possibly can, sharing our resources, and having that confidence that we're all pulling in the same direction. So for me, that's that's Canvas in a nutshell. I think it can be that landing space for everybody. And that's, yeah, what we're trying to do here at Mentone Grammar and, hopefully beyond.

I love that. Thank you so much, Tom, for coming. Our our viewers are gonna love this immensely. Watch this space. We will share your community profile on the Canvas community.

But thank you so much for coming. It's always a pleasure speaking with you. Again, I'm always so energized after we talk. Oh, it's my pleasure. You did very well, James.

Thank you very much. I was gonna ask you those questions back. I'd I'd love to hear your, superpower that you'd go for. But, And if you what? I well, what what have you gone for? What would be your superpower? I believe that my superpower would be the ability to influence energy for reals. And what I mean by that is, like, I think that I do that sometimes.

Like, I can typically pick up when people are sad and what that feels like, but I think the ability to actually raise people's spirit and help people and even give people the ability to see them through my eyes. Yep. Because I just see so much good in everyone and amazingness and I think if people could see themselves the way that I see them and just what they're capable of and their true potential and what they could actually change in this world and how wonderful they are, for me, that would be my superpower. Your clicking fingers would get tired kind of changing everyone's energy levels of, that. But I think that I have to send you a line from a gang of youth song.

There's definitely a line in there of, if people could see what I see in them. I'll send it through. It sounds better when they're singing it. But that is a good response, gems. Yeah.

Credit to you. I think that's a great great thing to be doing. And, yeah, that's I like it. I was I was thinking you were talking about, like, global energy crisis, but you're thinking more like people and and getting them feeling better about themselves. Yeah.

I think global energy, like, we we can Elon that. Yeah. Well, my wife's a psychologist, and, you know, I've been take talking to her about how could, there'd be better platforms for delivering self help and better help and and these things and and valid stuff. Again, I mean, you go on any social media and half the stuff there is either irrelevant or wrong, and you just have to be so careful with what you're coming across and having some kind of really research backed evidence, based information would be really helpful. So, anyway, just keep learning.

It's just it's so much fun stuff out there. Yeah. I agree. Like, even this morning, and I'm digressing a little bit, but I saw something about one of the Greens. What they're trying to actually implement is fully subsidize the diagnosis of autism and ADHD, right, and put that back.

And, you know but then, you know, they're going, oh my god. That's gonna put our medical practitioners under so much pressure. Well, surely, we've standardized it enough to remove that pressure to educate and skill other practitioners to be able to do that. I think about my diagnosis and how much that has changed my life and my son's life, and that was five thousand dollars. So if we remove the barrier to entry, think about all the other superpowers that are gonna explode from that diagnosis.

Right? And again, it comes back to mental health and self help and awareness. And I think that there is so much that we're not doing within this space. So your wife being a psychologist, high five to her. That's what I wanted to be when I grew up. If my relationship with education had been different, if I'd had a mister you as one of my teachers, it probably would have been different and I probably would have been a psychologist.

But someone said to me, imagine all the lives that you are changing though just by being you. You wouldn't have this much exposure and sort of interacting with all of these different people if you were just a psychologist. Yep. Yep. Tom, you have been amazing.

Thank you for coming and speaking with us today. Can't wait to see what unfolds, and thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me, and I I look forward to our, work in the future. Very exciting things on the horizon, and, we'll keep working towards, a better canvas. Yay. Thank you.