Online Learning

Most of the “Online” section of the website that involves troubleshooting and technical support is written to be student-friendly, while that student is being directly supported by a caring adult. We encourage you to work cooperatively with your student through any troubleshooting steps, so we’ve written the language to address them first in most cases.

Because of the technical and specific nature of much of the setup and troubleshooting, however, you’ll notice the language is likely too challenging for some of our youngest learners. We will continue to refine our language to try and strike the best balance we can.

When more than 80% of content is taught online, a student is engaged in what Allen & Seaman called online learning. Online learning is usually the purview of secondary and postsecondary education, but when a significant social crisis strikes a community, in order to keep children safe, learning may be shifted online in what is rightly termed emergency online learning.

Each student in the Arlington Public Schools is provided an iPad. When every student has a device, this is referred to as a “1:1 model,” pronounced one-to-one. Those iPads will be used to access a variety of resources for online learning.

Each student in APS will use two major platforms for their daily learning. The Department of Teaching and Learning has mandated that all APS schools use a learning management system (LMS) called Canvas and a live videoconferencing platform called Microsoft Teams. You may hear teachers refer to their “Canvas course” or their “Class Team,” in which they are referring to Canvas and Teams, respectively.

Additional tools that are specific to a function (like viewing a guided slide show) or a curricular area (like practicing fundamental math skills) will be linked through both Canvas and Teams.

This area of our website is designed to provide you with the support you will need to successfully support your child’s online learning at your home, both during emergency online learning and generally during normal learning.

Unless otherwise specified with italicized credits or credits embedded in a video, all of the graphics and content in the Online section of this website were created by Keith Reeves, the Technology Coach at Discovery Elementary.

These webpages may contain links to websites that are outside of the Arlington Public Schools network. APS does not control the content or relevancy of these outside sites.