Beyond the Canvas: Darren Ponman

[GemsK12HypeGirl]

At Hunter School of the Performing Arts, Deputy Principal Darren Ponman has led a whole-school approach to Canvas, bringing clarity, consistency and collaboration to teaching and learning. 

In this conversation, he shares how a thoughtful LMS setup can free up teachers to focus on what matters most: the human side of education. Darren also reflects on how tools like Commons and templates could support broader equity across NSW schools.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about the episode.

Here are some questions to get you started. 

1. How is your school currently using your LMS to support consistency across teaching teams? What gaps or inconsistencies have you noticed, and how might shared templates or resources  help address them?
   
   
2. Darren talks about the importance of setting up your LMS well to support both learning and relationships. What would a well-designed, well-implemented LMS look like in your context?  How could it help teachers spend more time on the “human stuff”?
   
   
3. What systems or practices could you introduce to make teaching and learning more equitable, especially for educators and learners in under-resourced or geographically dispersed areas? Are there tools within your LMS (like Commons or Blueprint courses) that could support this?
   
   
4. How does leadership influence how technology is adopted and embedded in a school? What role do school or system leaders play in modelling and enabling meaningful use of platforms like Canvas?
   
   
5. What does good design in education look like to you? Darren links creativity and design thinking to systems-level problem solving—how might that perspective shift how you approach challenges in your context?
   
   
6. How might you start a conversation with your team about improving your use of Canvas? What’s one small, practical change you could try based on Darren’s experience?

[nwilson7]

How does leadership influence how technology is adopted and embedded in a school? What role do school or system leaders play in modelling and enabling meaningful use of platforms like Canvas?

Leadership can influence how technology is adopted in many ways but one of the most import ways, as suggested with the second part, is through modeling.  We host many of our non-course groups and trainings via Canvas to give educators an idea of how a live Canvas course could look like.  We actually get lots of our faculty seeing innovative things in our training courses that they then want to try in their actual courses.  I have also always been in favor of seeing leaders also willing to do the same things as anyone else, so they go through the same "struggles" as any other faculty.  At my institution, many of the technology leaders also teach in some capacity so that has always helped other faculty "listen" to the suggestions provided.

Another way leadership can influence how technology is adopted is to actually make rules on its use.  While not always the best approach, sometimes at least minimum use standards are needed to get a base level of use of some systems.  This can be what it takes to get new tools adopted/used by everyone.  For example at my previous institution when online grades first became a thing (yes, this was a while ago) we had to make a rule that everyone had to do it as many faculty wanted to just stick to their paper gradebooks.  Now that seems like a weird thing to even talk about but was what it took those many years ago.

-Nick