Canvas News: Back to School

We are so excited to welcome all of you back to school, even in the midst of these stressful and unknowing times. We know there are many questions that still need answers and this newsletter will include some of those answers (that we know right now) especially concerning Canvas and technology, as well as resources for getting the year off and running!

In this newsletter you will find:

• "Back to School" video series
• "Facilitation and Technology" video series
• Updates to Google Meet
• New WeVideo integration in Canvas
• Substitutes and Canvas--NEW System
• Upcoming Parent and Student Canvas Resources
• Options for learning more about Canvas
• Abby and Carrie's new online office and hours for the year
• Online housekeeping reminders
• Resources

Google Meet is now integrated with Canvas so you can schedule and assign meetings right within your course. Watch the Google Meet webinar from June to learn more about the settings. Google has released the following schedule for updates.

In September:

• prohibit a student from joining the meeting after they have been removed
• end meeting for all students when class is finished
• the ability to bulk accept or reject join requests (only for participants outside of our district)
• disable in-meeting chat and set restrictions on who can present
• a setting that requires the teacher to join first
• larger tiled view, 7x7 (view up to 49 participants at once)
• Jamboard, a collaborative whiteboard, integrated into Meet

In October:

• Blur or replace your background, which can also be disabled by teacher
• attendance tracking
• breakout rooms

Later in the year:

• hand-raising
• Q&A feature with polling

Changes were also made to our WeVideo account over the summer. We have now moved to a district account, so you do not need to contact anyone at your school to start a school account. You just need to join with your School Email and it will connect you to our account. We only have 1500 licenses for the whole district, so unused licenses will be cleaned up periodically.

With the district account, we are now able to integrate WeVideo into our Canvas courses. You need to create a WeVideo account first with your school email before linking to it in Canvas. When you open your Canvas courses, you will see a link to WeVideo in your course navigation. To start the integration, you just need to click on WeVideo and authorize Canvas to access your account. If you do not want to use WeVideo in Canvas, you can remove it from the student's course navigation in settings.

See the TechHub WeVideo Help Page for more details.

Knowing that substitutes are going to be an even more critical aspect of our system this year. We worked with HR to make some changes. To start with, substitute teachers are now going to have a WDMCS email which will automatically give them a Canvas account, and all substitutes are required to take a Canvas training course. In addition, we have added a new role to Canvas, called Substitute Teacher. This role is similar to an observer (parent) role, but they do not have to be tied to any student. In the Substitute Teacher role, they can only view your curriculum and your students, they cannot make any changes to the grade, complete any grading, or edit the curriculum.

• Fully online teachers will always need to add the substitute to their courses so the sub can start and participate in the class meetings.
• If you are teaching in the face to face classroom, you choose if you want to add the substitute teacher to your Canvas class so the substitute can see what is expected of your students that day. One day and short term subbing assignments will be managed by the individual teachers by adding and removing the subs as needed.
• All long term substitute positions will be managed by HR. The substitute will be added and removed for the teacher by Abby or Carrie.

We will be putting together parent and student-friendly videos and handouts for how to find Canvas, create a parent/guardian observer account and manage their Canvas account. These will be shared before schools start as a resource for you to pass on to your students.

You will still need to create videos and resources for your students specific to your course, below are some suggestions of questions that need to be answered:

• How do I navigate my course?
• How do I contact my teacher?
• How do I know what to do for the day?
• Where do I go if I have a question?
• What do I do if I need technical help?

The next set of "return to learn" webinars, starting in September, will follow a flipped learning model. We will provide the topic, the "Intentional Content" for you to do, and scheduled time to meet to discuss or work with the new learning. You will sign up ahead of time and depending on the number of people interested and topic, we will meet virtually as a large group or with like-minded smaller groups.

Current List of Topics:

• Canvas Studio
• Reading Digitally
• Global Collaboration
• Gamification

The following classes will be offered this fall for you to continue your learning. Look for an email from Sheri Ankeney in the next few weeks with the Sched link to sign up!

1. Integrating Canvas Into Your Classroom: You've learned the technicalities of Canvas through our PD days, now learn how to integrate Canvas into your classroom. This course will teach you how to organize your class and how Canvas can help integrate your current curriculum, utilizing all the basic features Canvas offers, as well as learning how to integrate external tools like Google.
2. Integrating Canvas Into Your Classroom II: You've learned the basics of Canvas and have been able to implement assignments, quizzes, and announcements through Canvas into your classroom. This class will focus on the more advanced features of Canvas and teach you how to move toward simple integration of your lessons to a full redefinition of lessons that make them more meaningful and effective for your students. Topics will include: using outcomes, using analytics, quiz banks, rubrics, and making Canvas visually appealing.
3. Work Smarter Not Harder: Are you struggling to understand all the technology that exists in the world and in your classroom today? This course will walk you through the world of Google (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Chrome), digital citizenship, & social media. Participants will be able to "choose their own adventure" to work through the course and build on their existing skills.

Starting August 19, Abby and Carrie will be offering the following online office hours to answer questions and support your learning, making sure that we are available before and after school. These are open sessions and you can join anytime during the hour by just clicking on the link below or in our email signature.

These are first come first serve. If you prefer to meet with one of us one on one or to schedule a time for us to virtually join your PLC, please email us to make arrangements.

Abby's Office Hour:

Monday-Friday 2:45-3:45 pm, https://meet.google.com/uhu-hsow-mdr

Carrie's Office Hour:

Monday-Friday 7:00-8:30 am, https://meet.google.com/pdy-jcay-pof

We are all using our laptops, Chromebooks, and the internet much more than we ever did before, so there are a couple of tasks that we need to remind ourselves, as well as our students, to do on a regular basis:

1. Restart your device! Multiple updates are being sent out to your laptops and to the student Chromebooks. These help them to keep them running at their best. This is not just clam-shelling your device, fully shut down, restart, turn it off and turn it back on again.
2. Clear your cache! This is especially important if you are in multiple online meetings throughout the day, the Internet is not loading, pictures aren't showing up, it's acting glitchy...follow these instructions to clear that cache.

Please take a minute to "vote up" for these feature suggestions that WDMCS staff have found or suggested to Canvas. We have added new suggestions to the bottom of the list. Remember, you need to click "log in" at the top right for your vote to count.

1. Multiple Grading Schemes

2. Final Grade Passback to Infinite Campus

3. Gradebook nicknames

4. Post Letter Grade Based on Selected Outcomes

5. Color Code Assignment Groups in Gradebook
   

6. Partial Credit for "Matching", "Categorization", and "Sorting" question types in Quizzes.Next tool

7. Parent/Guardian Observers Listed Under the Student

8. Message Students who are complete or incomplete from Gradebook

9. Missing Assignments Report

10. Edit Default Grading Scheme on Account

11. Accessing Team Drives on Google Cloud Assignment

12. Special language character panel/chart integration for Rich Content Editor

13. Monitor Student Grades in all Courses

14. Print Canvas Quizzes

15. Delete Submissions by Students

Online Learning Coordinator

Email: cunninghama@wdmcs.org
Website: http://www.wdmcs.org
Location: 3550 Mills Civic Parkway, West Des Moines, IA, USA
Phone: (515)633-4545
Twitter: @mrs_c_ham

Online Learning Coordinator

Email: jacobsc@wdmcs.org
Website: http://www.wdmcs.org
Location: 3550 Mills Civic Parkway, West Des Moines, IA, USA
Phone: (515)633-5159
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thetiedyedteacher/
Twitter: @tiedyedteacher