Skip to content

Nero ·

Teach with Real Ancient Coins — Right in Your LMS

Canoa // edu turns an open scholarly catalog of Greek, Roman, and Persian coinage into ready-to-grade assignments. Every student gets a unique coin. Every image stays properly licensed. Every grade lands in your gradebook automatically.

Try the Hoard Case demo For Districts & Admins

Works with Canvas · Schoology · Moodle (LTI 1.3)

128862 published coin types · 39642 with museum photographs · 540692 recorded specimens

Изображение: © British Museum · лицензия

RIC I (second edition) Nero 16 obv

Primary sources without the paperwork

Museum-grade coin images and scholarly data, displayed with full attribution on our site — nothing to download, license, or clear with your district.

Assignments students can't copy

Our generator gives each student a different coin from your chosen filter — same skills, unique evidence. AI chatbots can't answer without doing the actual catalog work.

Grading that does itself

Legend decoding, attribution, and dating tasks are auto-checked against catalog data. Essays get side-by-side review with the source. Scores flow back to your LMS gradebook.

Hoard case: the detective assignment

A fresh coin hoard: students identify every coin, date the burial, trace the origins, and argue who buried it — five stages, four auto-graded. Try the demo.

For researchers: the same data powers the canoa-hoard-analysis agent skill — regional hoard studies (coin distribution by emperors/periods, charts, PDF article) via the public API. Install: npx skills add canoa-dev/canoa-skills

Made for Your Classroom

See the full curriculum — five tracks, stage by stage

How it works

  1. 1. Pick a template

    Legend decoding, blind attribution, metrology math, curation project, or essay — filtered by ruler, mint, metal, or date range.

  2. 2. Add to your course

    One click through LTI — the assignment appears in Canvas or Schoology like any other activity.

  3. 3. Students explore, you review

    Each student works with their own coin on canoanumis.org. Auto-graded parts score instantly; your rubric handles the rest.

Built for Student Privacy from Day One

  • We don't know who your students are. Canoa // edu receives only an anonymous LTI identifier — no names, no emails, no photos.
  • Grades live in your LMS, not on our servers. Student submissions are automatically deleted after the school year.
  • Zero third-party trackers on any /edu/ page. No ads. No data sale. Ever.
  • FERPA-aligned · COPPA-safe · GDPR-ready. NDPA (SDPC standard) agreement available for districts.

Read our Student Privacy Policy NDPA for Districts

Coin type data is open under ODbL. Museum images are displayed only on canoanumis.org with full attribution, in line with each museum's open-access policy — your compliance answer is built in. All activities meet WCAG 2.2 AA; screen-reader users get scholarly obverse/reverse descriptions as image alternatives. Accessibility Conformance Report.

The hoard case: a full investigation

A pot of Roman coins, just dug up. Sixteen coins from eight different authorities and eight mints. Students work through five stages — attribution, burial dating, geography, composition, and a written conclusion — with the first four auto-checked against catalog data. No LMS needed for the demo.

Explore the hoard case demo

Ready-Made Lesson Plans, Standards Included

Free, classroom-tested plans aligned to Common Core literacy standards, ACL/ACTFL, and the AP frameworks — each with a student handout, a rubric, and a printable PDF packet.

Available now: Reading Power: Decoding Roman Imperial Coin Legends (AP Latin), Coins as Evidence: A DBQ Without a Document (world history), and Weighing an Empire: Metrology and Debasement (statistics). Browse all plans.

Teacher email only. No student data. Unsubscribe anytime.

Frequently asked questions

Is Canoa // edu free?

Pilots for the 2026–27 school year are free: one school, unlimited teachers, the full feature set. The public catalog and the lesson plans are free permanently. District licensing is quoted per site — see pricing.

Do students need accounts?

No. Students launch the activity from your LMS; we receive only an anonymous LTI identifier.

Can students cheat with AI?

Every student gets a different coin from your chosen filter — same skills, unique evidence. AI chatbots can't answer without doing the actual catalog work.

Does it work with Google Classroom?

Canoa // edu integrates through LTI 1.3, which is native to Canvas, Schoology, and Moodle. For Google Classroom we support shareable assignment links; full grade sync is on our roadmap.

What's a hoard case assignment?

A multi-stage investigation where students receive a fresh coin hoard: identify each coin's authority and denomination, date the burial using terminus post quem logic, trace the origins by mint, analyze the composition, and write a concluded findings report. Four of five stages are auto-graded. Try the demo — no LMS needed.

What about our district's vendor approval?

The whole packet is published: NDPA (SDPC), privacy policy, subprocessor list, and an Accessibility Conformance Report. Start at for districts or write to privacy@canoanumis.org.

All questions, answered in full

Bring 2,000 Years of History to Your Next Class

Try the hoard case Request a Pilot

Questions? edu@canoanumis.org