EdTech Discovery
Hermes

An instrument for spotting the next edtech opportunity — generated ideas, each traced to the real-world signals behind it.

Updated Jun 24, 2026 · 10 ideas · 1304 signals
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Field brief · generated Jun 24, 2026

FlowState Study

Why now

Canvas's botched mobile update broke to-do lists and grade visibility for a large user base simultaneously, and LMS-side mobile experiences are structurally under-invested. LMS APIs are now mature enough to enable reliable read access without deep partnerships.

Problem

Mobile LMS apps like Canvas suffer from broken to-do lists, unreliable notifications, and poor assignment tracking after updates — forcing students to mentally manage their own deadlines across fragmented tools.

Audience

College and high school students (ages 14-22) who primarily access coursework via mobile and need a reliable personal academic command center independent of whatever LMS their school uses.

Concept

A student-side mobile app that connects to any LMS via read-only API (Canvas, Schoology, Brightspace, Google Classroom) and rebuilds a clean, reliable task list, deadline calendar, and grade tracker from raw data — insulating the student experience from upstream LMS UI changes or outages. Includes offline caching so a Canvas crash doesn't break the student's view of upcoming work.

The signals behind this idea

The real-world evidence the pipeline drew on to generate this idea.

need
Reviews: Canvas Student

[1/5] Hacked

Got hacked ruined this app my school life hate deadlines very glitchy I get a horrid amount of notifications it’s so bad it makes me miss brightspace somehow this app will steal your data cause it got hacked the ui and to-do list suck the calendar is useless and the ClassLink version is better letting you see how your grade would be affected by different scores my teacher loves it we as students hate it

App Store review · no public link
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Reviews: Canvas Student

[1/5] New update makes this app insanely slow

This app was good, but a random mobile update made it act very slow and now it takes 10 minutes to load every page. I dread needing to do work more then i normally would

App Store review · no public link
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Reviews: Canvas Student

[1/5] I hate this stupid app

HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO GET A GOOD SCORE ON A QUIZ WHEN THE DAMN LATE PENALTY IS THERE TO SCREW EVERYTHING UP, FIX THIS

App Store review · no public link
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Reviews: Canvas Student

[1/5] New mobile UI SUCKS

Title says it all. Really sucks. Most of it doesn’t load. Is ugly as hell.

App Store review · no public link
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Reviews: Canvas Student

[2/5] Slow and useless

The new update is so slow!!! It takes forever to load everything. The to do list isn’t accurate. If you swap back to the old version, it loads quickly but it doesn’t populate a to do list!!! Why mess with something that worked??? No need for a new look. You should have beta tested it before releasing!

App Store review · no public link
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Reviews: Canvas Student

[1/5] New Update Sucks

The only thing I want to see is my classes and they are extremely difficult to find given the new update.

App Store review · no public link
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Reviews: Canvas Student

[1/5] Update version

I just accidentally update new version and it doesnt work well. For my to do list, now it appears nothing due for me. So I cant track what assignments Im missing.

App Store review · no public link
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Reviews: Canvas Student

[1/5] New update ruined it

Used to be good but the new update sucks. My classes never load properly on the dashboard

App Store review · no public link
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Reviews: Canvas Student

[1/5] Lack of Mobile Device Accessibility

The new update took off mobile device accessibility on the phone and iPad. When viewing files, the same file viewer from the web version appears, successfully taking away valuable spaces with zoom, page count, expand, download, and it show empty white pages outside the page edge. In addition, you cannot zoom in with your finger to your desire location, you are forced to zoom with the +/- and the page zooms to the edge of the page, and you need to find where you were last time. All of these make the already small documents look smaller on mobile device, and disrupt the instinct to ZOOM IN or OUT with your fingers. The mobile app should be a quick easy way to access materials on the go, If I wanted the web version, I would have use a computer or laptop. The to do list panda and check box is also not needed for many others who would prefer a cleaner page as before. Please enable a system where students can customize how it should look according to accessibility.

App Store review · no public link
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Reviews: Canvas Student

[3/5] Nothing loads or works

Useful for school and everything when it actually works. For me, everything is constantly loading, like the files page, assignments page, announcements page, and the grades page. I either get error messages or it buffers for forever.

App Store review · no public link
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Reviews: Canvas Student

[1/5] Major bugs

Doesn’t load documents correctly. It just shows a bunch of code.

App Store review · no public link
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Reviews: Canvas Student

[1/5] Bug Ridden

This is one of the most buggy apps I have ever worked with. Anything other than the most basic functions seem to never work reliably and even then, sometimes the app doesn’t work at all. Please take some time to go back through and make sure you existing features work before adding anything else

App Store review · no public link