“No more pencils, no more books,” Alice Cooper sang on the 1972 hit record, School’s Out. “No more dirty looks for teachers!” Two generations later, the so-called learning management tool Canvas has made the old school song come true. Say goodbye to pencils, books and sometimes even teachers. Hello Canvas.
Canvas is a great tool for our pixelated age. In that spirit, let me use ChatGPT, a Canvas coconspirator, to explain it:
“Canvas is the most used learning platform on the internet,” reports the AI chatbot. “Schools, colleges, universities and some businesses use it to plan courses, distribute resources, collect assignments, manage quizzes, communicate with students and post grades.”
I’ve always hated Canvas—its sad layout, its monotony, its demands to do what it commands (because otherwise it stops and waits to obey). So imagine my schadenfreude when it actually fell as spring terms were ending around the world. And around the world there were consequences when Canvas screens everywhere flashed threats from a group of hackers calling themselves ShinyHunters (“destroying your systems from ’19,” their tagline, followed by a winking semicolon).
“ShinyHunters has breached Instructure (again),” the message announced, referring to Canvas’ parent company. “Instead of contacting us to resolve it, they ignored us.” The message then offered victims of the institution a remedy. “If the schools on the affected list are interested in preventing the release of their data … contact us privately to … negotiate an agreement … before all are leaked.” The hackers claim to have secured users’ personal data, data that includes private messages.
Here I must say unequivocally that I am completely against such threats and attacks and looting.
In the end, Instructure admitted it made a deal with the hackers to destroy the stolen data, paying an undisclosed amount of money. The canvas was back online within hours. And Instructure has apologized to customers with CEO Steve Daly admitting that the system continues to be vulnerable. “The threats facing educational institutions and education technology providers are endless,” he acknowledged in the company’s official statement. “No single platform can build a strong ecosystem on its own, but I believe we can as a community.”
But why has so much ed (including my home of education) allowed itself to become addicted to Canvas, effectively handing over control of the classroom to a for-profit corporation? Now it is a company that does many jobs for teachers and administrators. It is a company that educates students to fit its programs (and therefore programs as a whole). Instead of doing extracurricular activities, higher education should encourage and promote individual creativity.
As with many universities around the world, we all use Canvas at the University of Oregon. It organizes our work. It would be easy. It enables us to work 24 hours a day (is that a good thing?). I use it to keep in touch with my reporting, writing and discussion classes.
Shortly after the ShinyHunters hack, I asked my students how they related to Canvas—was it friend or foe? Although my students used their full names in this ad assignment, I am being honest and only use their first names here.
“I can’t say I cared much about the Canvas being shut down,” Will wrote. “For me it meant that I would not be able to re-check the instructions of the assignment I was working on. The money involved was not mine and the people who owned it did not need it.”
“It scares me that all my education could be ended in an instant,” worried Brendan. “It makes me think that if there’s a solar flare that wipes out all technology, we’re going to choke.”
“Most of my friends were happy because it was low,” Braylon reported. “They can write an excuse to the teacher.”
“I had two papers to get out and I was under pressure because I needed two papers and I couldn’t open them,” said Meileen.
A free report came to Max. “I was not directly affected by the closure of Canvas,” he admitted. “I was too tired to work that day.” But when he is well rested, Canvas reigns supreme. “Without Canvas, I wouldn’t have been able to do well in my studies.”
Relying on Canvas proved problematic for Tayli because it acts as a liaison between students and teachers. “Not doing well made me feel unprepared as a student.”
My favorite answer came from Sidalu. “I was hoping it would go down forever,” he wrote neatly in pencil on college-ruled paper. “I hate that app.”
Setting the Canvas standard for students, faculty and administrators not only makes education vulnerable to ShinyHunters forms of hijacking. Such arrangements help to foster both teacher and student development and creativity. The successful closure of ShinyHunters on Canvas gives the school an opportunity to rethink offering a classroom in a brave new world of standardization and regulation fueled by big business.
Canvas enables us to work 24 hours a day (who in their right mind wants to do that?). But I digress. Screens are verboten in my classroom; I assigned students to adapt their old-school style of work: ink on paper. No thieves working on the dark web can steal such jobs from the pocket of students.
Now we know that Canvas breaks easily. Paper not so much.
