Newington College hosted over 100 attendees from New Zealand, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales at Instructure’s first Asia-Pacific Canvas conference – CanvasCon 2015 – on Friday 7 August. In Canvas’ keynote remarks, Instructure acknowledged the College’s early adoption as the first Australian customer in 2011 when the Utah company had no plans to sell or deliver its Canvas product to education institutions outside the US. They also noted how appropriate it was to now host their first CanvasCon at Newington College, one of their first takers. The number of schools using Canvas has now increased from 2 in 2011 to 85 in 2015.

Newington has served as a case study for schools across Australia for its integration of Canvas with student diaries on SPACES and its approach to teaching and learning. Mr Terence Priester, eLearning Leader, presented an overview of the College’s unique adoption strategy and how it mirrors the SAMR model – a Learning with Technology model that encourages student-centred engagement – in complexity. Maths Assistant Head of Department, Mr Tom Lever also gave a presentation on a Year 7 Assessment task in which students were asked to use an iPad presentation app for their Canvas submissions and the success of that project. Additionally, History teacher, Mr Alex Fisher presented a talk on a Year 10 Civics History guided inquiry research task on “Changing Rights and Freedoms”, which looked at rights and freedoms using background sources from the US Civil Rights Movement and Aboriginal rights in Australia. Each of these projects proved the efficiency and success of Canvas at Newington to encourage teachers to think more creatively about their lessons and assessments.