WolfWhale · 2026–27
Replace the stack. Do not become Canvas.
Saskatchewan schools run MySchoolSask for the office, Edsby for families, Canvas or Moodle or Brightspace for class. WolfWhale is the replacement: one login, one student, a legal register, a parent who can see their kid, an export a Nation can take.
Parity means the KEEP list below — the school day — not Instructure’s LTI catalog. A provincial division keeps MySchoolSask for the Ministry file until Student Records accepts ours. A First Nations authority not on Aspen turns the office off too.
KEEP list (the feature list)
From the Drive canon Ryland wrote 21 Aug 2026. This is what we build. Update this page when a line ships.
School space, roles, people — preferred name ≠ legal name
Shipped
Legal register: present / late / away / excused, family sees the same day
Shipped
OneRoster in (CSV/zip) — Saturday people already on the list
Shipped
Classes / homeroom + periods 1–8
Shipped
Studio → lesson / assignment / quiz → student turns in → teacher marks
Shipped
One official gradebook (SIS marks = LMS marks) + SK course-code report card
Shipped
Family home: their kids only, planned away, message teacher
Shipped
Student home: classes, every assignment with its course name, marks, week, orca, games
Shipped
IIP follows the student into every class
Shipped
Export and leave (CSV / JSON / OneRoster / SDS-shaped)
Shipped
Class board — teacher posts, family and student see the same note
Shipped
Week calendar — due work, away, board on one card
Shipped
One-tap dashboard — Canvas / MySchoolSask school day folded onto 5–7 tools, student file not twelve Aspen tabs
Shipped
Canada Postgres + real per-person sign-in
Canada host
Certified SDS to Student Records (Ministry student number)
Ministry
Rubrics, class talk, SpeedGrader, day’s periods on the office pulse
Shipped
LTI and fees
Later
One tap. Not forty menus.
Canvas puts Home, Announcements, Assignments, Discussions, Grades, People, Pages, Files, Syllabus, Outcomes, Quizzes, Modules, Conferences, Collaborations, and Settings in a left rail — then hides half of them, so students live in To-Do and never find the course. MySchoolSask (Follett Aspen) puts Details, Contacts, Attendance, Conduct, Transcripts, Schedule, Special Ed, Fees, Health, and Membership on side-tabs. WolfWhale keeps the jobs. The chrome dies. Every KEEP item is a tool on the dashboard. Tap it.
| They open | You tap | Fate |
|---|---|---|
| Canvas Assignments / Quizzes / To-Do | Assignments | Keep — course name on every row. Open in one tap. |
| Canvas Grades / Aspen Transcripts | Marks / report card | Keep — same SIS marks the family sees. |
| Canvas People + twelve Aspen student tabs | People / Student file | Fold — preferred name, contact, attendance, IIP, marks on one card. |
| Canvas Files / Pages / Outcomes | Class files | Fold — lessons, 3D, SK games. Not a module maze. |
| Canvas Announcements / Edsby class feed | Class board | Keep — teacher posts, family and student see the same note. |
| Canvas Calendar / Edsby week / Aspen schedule | This week + today’s bell | Keep — due, away, board, periods. |
| Canvas Inbox / Edsby messages | Messages | Keep — reply on the same card. |
| Canvas Attendance (participation) | Today’s register | Kill their version. The register is legal: here / late / away / excused. |
| Canvas Modules / Observer / History / Settings | — | Kill. Observer is not a parent. Modules are a maze. |
| Aspen Details / Contacts / Special Ed | Student file (office) | Fold — legal name labelled, never on a class list. |
| Aspen enrolment / SDS / reports | Enrol + Ministry export | Keep the jobs. SDS is shaped, labelled not certified. |
| Aspen Fees / Health / Conduct / Lockers / master schedule | — | Later, or kill. A school asks; we do not clone the kitchen sink. |
What they complain about. How we kill it.
Read on Reddit (r/Teachers, r/canvaslms, r/saskatchewan), CBC, SK division pages, and Instructure’s own course-nav advice. The plan is not “Canvas with nicer colour.” It is one dashboard that does not make the same mistakes.
Canvas
r/Teachers · r/canvaslms · Instructure community
- They say
- Too many clicks. Forty items in the course nav. Instructure even tells teachers to hide Assignments — then students cannot find the work.
- Most students only open the global To-Do. Modules and the actual course disappear.
- No jump from an assignment back to its course. Course names are missing on the list.
- Work already turned in still looks due.
- The gradebook hides drops, weights, and muted items. Parents are an Observer bolt-on. Attendance is participation, not a register.
- WolfWhale does
- One dashboard. Six tools. Classes and Assignments are always on — a teacher cannot hide them.
- Every piece of work shows its course code. Open it from the class row or from the one Assignments list.
- To do, turned in, and done are three piles. Finished work does not look due.
- Marks on the student dashboard are the same SIS marks the family sees. The register is legal, not LMS points.
- Still to earn
- Rubrics, SpeedGrader, LTI, and discussions wait until a school asks. We will not rebuild the kitchen sink to claim parity.
Edsby
CBC Saskatchewan · SK teachers · parent groups
- They say
- August 2023: a preferred-name / legal-name sync showed legal names to classmates and outed trans students in Saskatchewan.
- Notifications and messages go missing until someone clears the cache. Known for months.
- Saskatchewan has no daylight time. Conference and due-date clocks slip.
- Parents need a tutorial to find assignments and grades. Annual rollover takes the portal down.
- Edsby sits on MySchoolSask. It is a layer, not the system of record.
- WolfWhale does
- Preferred names on the class plane. Legal names in a labelled office vault. Never on a class list. That is the product, not a sync job.
- Messages live on the dashboard. No second portal. No “clear your cache.”
- Saskatchewan is the clock. The week card and the register use the same local day.
- Family opens one child screen: here/away, due work with course names, board, message, planned away.
- We are the record. OneRoster in, export and leave. We do not sync from Follett to invent a parent app.
- Still to earn
- Push alerts that survive a dead radio tower need the Canada store and a real device token. Until then the dashboard is the inbox.
MySchoolSask
SK divisions · First Nations IT · teachers who endure Aspen
- They say
- Office software. Teachers endure it. Families do not live there.
- The parent portal lagged years behind the office file. Data transfer delays are the story.
- Two or three logins: MySchoolSask plus Edsby plus Canvas or Moodle.
- First Nations schools often buy extra IT just to keep Aspen standing. Legal names are the default display plane.
- WolfWhale does
- One login for teacher, family, student, and office.
- The register is the first card on the teacher dashboard. Present, late, away, excused. Real date.
- For a First Nations authority not on Aspen, the office lives here too — enrolment, legal vault, SDS-shaped export labelled not certified.
- For a provincial division, MySchoolSask can keep the Ministry file until Student Records accepts ours. The teacher and family day still move on day one.
- Still to earn
- Certified SDS to Student Records is paperwork, not code. The export is already shaped. We do not pretend it is accepted.
What they have. What we take. What we kill.
Canvas
Ruby on Rails + React (InstUI) + Postgres. Built for universities.
- Gets right
- A course can feel like a course. SpeedGrader. Open LTI.
- Gets wrong
- Not an SIS. Parents are an Observer bolt-on. Attendance is participation, not a legal register. Forty items in a sidebar. US gravity.
- Steal
- Open a piece of work in one tap.
- Kill
- The kitchen sink. Observer. Module mazes.
Moodle
PHP monolith, Mustache, 2,000 plugins. Free license, expensive IT.
- Gets right
- A school with a sysadmin can bend it.
- Gets wrong
- No native parent portal. No SIS. UI from another decade. Plugin tax forever.
- Steal
- Nothing from the chrome.
- Kill
- Plugins as the product.
Brightspace (D2L)
Canadian company (Kitchener–Waterloo). Enterprise LMS. Accessibility culture.
- Gets right
- Canada. A11y. A parent app exists.
- Gets wrong
- Still an LMS sitting beside an SIS. Too many clicks. Higher-ed DNA.
- Steal
- Canadian HQ and WCAG as a default, not a badge.
- Kill
- Ten clicks to do two things.
Edsby
Toronto. Azure. Sits on top of a provincial SIS.
- Gets right
- K-12 native. Parents can see a kid. Used in Saskatchewan.
- Gets wrong
- Not the system of record. Syncs from MySchoolSask. August 2023: a preferred-name sync outed students by showing legal names to classmates.
- Steal
- Family sees ‘is my kid ok’ today. Class board. Week at a glance.
- Kill
- Being a layer. Ever putting a legal name on a class list.
MySchoolSask
Follett Aspen, operated with Fujitsu. Provincial SIS of record.
- Gets right
- One SK student number. Enrolment. The register the ministry can take.
- Gets wrong
- Office software. Teachers endure it. Families do not live there. No classroom. Legal names as the default display plane.
- Steal
- Attendance as the legal register. One student record.
- Kill
- The UI. The teacher-facing day.
Canada host — Aurora
I cannot click Marketplace from this desk. Ryland does this once on Vercel. Region must be Canada (Central), Montréal — ca-central-1. Not Virginia. Not Neon.
- Open Vercel Marketplace → AWS. Install Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL on project
wolfwhale-deck. - Region: Canada (Central). Functions already pin to Montréal (
yul1). - Let it inject
DATABASE_URLorPGHOST+AWS_REGION=ca-central-1. A US host is refused for student names. - Tell this desk when the URL is on the project. Then we turn on real per-person sign-in.
Hobby plans sometimes block Marketplace AWS. If the install is greyed out, that is a Vercel plan click — not a code gap.
Two doors
We can code
The whole KEEP list. Class board and week calendar are on the dashboards. Canada Postgres is one click on Aurora in Montréal — then real teacher logins.
We cannot fake
Ministry SDS certification. That is Student Records paperwork. The SDS-shaped export is labelled not certified until they accept it. We still replace the teacher and family day.