Kenmore - Town of Tonawanda Union Free School District

Increasing student engagement through the use of a new complete learning management system led Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda Union Free School District (Ken-Ton) to begin using Canvas in 2019 with great success. Now the Western New York school continues its journey to embody a culture of innovation throughout its entire learning community. As part of that approach, administrators continue to provide the tools and support needed to meet ever-changing academic and career requirements and create a rewarding learning experience for students. A robust learning management platform like Canvas has already proven to be a big step toward fulfilling these commitments.

The Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda Union Free School District, also known as Ken-Ton, is one of the largest school districts in Western New York. It oers instruction for students ranging from pre-kindergarten through high school and has built a strong culture of learning and support for teachers, sta, and the surrounding communities. The district’s strategic plan, Ken-Ton Forward, currently features key technology tools for both classrooms and individual users. To date, this includes:

Philip Jarosz and Joi Chimera, secondary instructional innovation support specialists for Ken-Ton, help teachers integrate innovative new tools into their curriculum and lessons. Their goals included creating a culture of innovation and pursuing technology initiatives accordingly.

“By following this plan, technology will not only be used as an administrative tool, but as an unequivocal need and resource,” said Chimera.

Ken-Ton had implemented Google Classroom but wanted to increase student engagement by incorporating a new complete learning management system (LMS) that would incorporate teaching, learning, and professional development. So in 2018, Ken-Ton administrators decided to try a semester-long pilot program with the Schoology LMS involving 12 teachers and hundreds of students.

During the Schoology pilot, Ken-Ton administrators noticed several things that didn’t work for their needs. For example, the interface wasn’t user-friendly. Also, there was a general lack of proactive support from Schoology. And students in co-taught classrooms couldn’t be co-seated in courses on Schoology. So the Ken-Ton team continued looking for other learning platform options.

Jarosz learned more about the Canvas Learning Management Platform at an education technology conference and decided to explore using it. Chimera, who had used Schoology and Blackboard as both a student and teacher, noticed right away that Canvas had a superior user interface. So Jarosz and Chimera reviewed Canvas with the district’s technology directors, who switched half of the teachers who had tried Schoology for the first semester to Canvas starting in January 2019.

Ken-Ton needed Canvas to be able to integrate with its student information system (SIS), Infinite Campus. The team also needed the ability to schedule co-taught students in the same section using cross-listing, and, of course, for students to have easy access to their courses. Canvas delivered all this and much more the district needed. And Canvas representatives consistently visited with the Ken-Ton team to discuss the product and provide training and answer questions along the way. A few months after the evaluation began, Ken-Ton closed its Schoology Enterprise account and went with Canvas instead.

Ken-Ton is already planning to expand the use of Canvas to more classrooms (grades 11 and 12, plus middle school ENL) and as a professional development tool for teachers. The district is also using Canvas to review teachers’ curriculums, making it easier for them to distribute content to students and integrate technology into lessons.

“Canvas has been there every step of the way to support us when we need it, whether it be getting our sync up and running or navigating the day-to-day needs of our teachers as we all learn the system. Beyond that, we’ve now met and ‘followed’ a wide range of educators who support one another as we all make learning better for our students,” said Chimera.

Teachers’ needs factored in heavily to Ken-Ton’s decision to go with Canvas. They were excited about increasing peer reviews of assignments, using the SpeedGrader tool to quickly evaluate individual and group assignments, leaning on MasteryPaths to promote custom, performance-based learning experiences for students, and involving teachers and designers in identifying activities and dierentiating assignments to help students achieve mastery. Also, administrators were excited about utilizing Blueprint Courses, an easier way to deploy and maintain design templates across courses or instructors.

“One factor in our decision was the future of how Canvas could help us see out a vision of a coherent, consistent, engaging curriculum for all of our students.” Joi Chimera, Instructional Innovation Support Specialist, Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda UFSD

In the next several years, the district plans to further embody a culture of innovation throughout its entire learning community as administrators continue to provide the tools and support needed to meet ever-changing academic and career requirements. A robust learning management platform like Canvas has already proven to be a big step toward fulfilling these commitments.