Schoology vs Canvas

I'm a college administrator and we are looking at different option for LMS. Schoology and Canvas seem very adapted to the students needs. I would be interested to have your opinion on those 2 socal media LMS, which offer the best options - (easy to use, collaboration, students appreciation, integration of other social media...).

Canvas and Schoology

Tags: LMS, canvas, schoology

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Permalink Reply by Matt Bury on April 22, 2012 at 2:29pm

Hi Rachel,

Firstly, there may be troubles ahead if you build in dependencies on commercial social networking services over which you have no rights to audit or moderate as an administrator. There's also legal and ethical issues associated with services such as Google+, LinkedIn and Facebook: http://blog.matbury.com/2011/12/11/a-thorny-issue-protecting-teache...

Luckily, there are more useful, legal, ethical alternatives available that can more than likely do everything that your teachers and learners need: http://blog.matbury.com/2012/01/08/safe-social-networking-alternati...

Canvas is open source and at first glance it looks good but many common web server configurations don't support its programming language, Ruby. It may be a good choice but I'd check the details before commiting. Schoology is a venture capital startup company so I'd avoid it like the plague, mainly because it's closed source and liable to change and/or go under without warning, and there can be many hidden costs (It's primary function isn't education, it's provding a profitable return on Wall St. investments). There are other LMS alterrnatives that can more than likely do everything your teachers and learners need at a fraction of the cost: http://blog.matbury.com/2011/10/19/open-source-software-for-elearning/

Another point to consider when choosing software is support. I recommend going for an LMS and social networking platform that has a large community of users, a community of freelance developers, IT support workers and other service providers, available plugins, support forums, up to date, accurate, well-written documenation, and a substantial body of published books on all aspects of using them for learning and teaching.

I hope this helps!

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Permalink Reply by Michelle M on April 24, 2012 at 10:56am

Hi Rachel,

At CrossTec Corporation we offer a product called SchoolVue.

SchoolVue is a classroom management software tool designed to allow teachers and lab instructors to take control of classroom technology at all times. Some of the main features include the ability to manage and monitor student screens, create and administer custom tests, sync up other classroom technology such as an interactive whiteboard, screen annotation, and more. SchoolVue is the most effective and reliable management tool in a wireless or 1:1 environment. We currently have schools using this product to manage 30,000 or more students wirelessly. You can explore the full list of features and more information at: http://www.crosstecsoftware.com/index.php?option=com_content&vi...

We also offer a free 30-day download trail, which can we found at: http://www.crosstecsoftware.com/index.php?option=com_content&vi...

Hope this helps,

Michelle Murphy

mmurphy@crosstecsoftware.com

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Permalink Reply by Lorrie Cook on July 25, 2012 at 3:16pm

For what it's worth, I have used Canvas personally to teach an online college course and give my whole hearted recommendation. My students and I both found it very intuitive and easy to use. The state of Utah has adopted Canvas for all of it's higher education and many Utah school districts are using it. It keeps getting better with every update.