You are ready for the next steps and leveling up your Canvas game now! The tip I have to share with you today is the Training Services Portal in Canvas. Now that you are in the groove, check out the Training Services Portal, if you haven’t yet. There are many training resources there. If you go to the green sidebar in Canvas and click on Help, you have access to more than just the Canvas Guides, there is also a hyperlink to the Training Services Portal there. Check out courses, videos, and register for live training. 
Tools & Tips Tuesdays
How to Undelete in Canvas
The tip I have to share with you today is how to undelete content in Canvas. If you go to the homepage of the course you deleted content from, in the address bar add “/undelete” to the URL. There you will be able to view and restore deleted items.
Example: westbloomfieldsd.instructure.com/courses/12345/undelete
*Note that undeleting content differs from Viewing Page History.
Record to Slides
The tool I have to share with you today is called Record to Slides. It is an extension that allows you to add videos directly into your Google slides. This is a useful tool because it allows you to embed yourself onto the slides so students can see and hear you teaching your slides. This is great for emergent readers and useful for providing instruction and expectations on the corresponding slide. You have been doing a fantastic job integrating Google Slides into your Canvas course(s)! This is a great next step and way to enhance those embedded slides.
How to take a picture on a Chromebook
The tip I have to share with you today is how to take a picture on a Chromebook. Many of you have been creating assignments in Canvas that require a File Upload or picture attachment. However, do your students know how to take a photo with their Chromebook? This is a technology skill that you may want to teach before assigning assignments that require picture attachments in Canvas. I made an animated GIF that demonstrates how to do this below. Feel free to share this with students in your Canvas course(s)!
- In the corner of their Chromebook screen, select the Launcher.
- Open Camera. Then, on the right side, choose an option:
- Select Photo- Take photo.
- Select Video- Start recording.
Google Drive Shortcuts & Canvas
The tip I have to share with you today is how to add shortcuts to your Google Drive. The Google LTI integration with Canvas currently does not allow you to select items from Shared with me or Shared Drives. However, if you add a shortcut to your Google Drive, Canvas will be able to retrieve the file. To add a shortcut to your drive, follow these steps:
1. Right-click on the file you want to add to your drive
2. Click on Add shortcut to Drive
3. Select the location where you want to place the shortcut
4. Click Add shortcut
Canvas Announcements & Digital Social Contracts
The tip I have to share with you today is about the Announcements feature of Canvas. Announcements is a great place to be able to send a quick message or to-do list to your class.
Some examples for using Announcements include:
-
Reminding your students what they need to accomplish to stay on track
- Point students to resources and links
- Leave a message for the entire class with video or audio comments
- Building community and routine
Food for thought:
What might a digital social contract look like for your students? Developing a digital social contract with students is a perfect activity to facilitate some discussion around digital citizenship.
Canvas Instructor Resources & Back to School Resources from Google
The Canvas Instructor Guide is a great resource to reference as you are getting comfortable with Canvas. There is a Canvas Teacher App for mobile devices, too.
Back to School resources from Google:
-
Ready to go Back to School lessons from Applied Digital Skills
-
Google announced 50+ updates to their products during their back to school event
-
Google Teacher Center free technology training for teachers
-
Please share this Tech Toolkit for Families and Guardians with your students and their families. There is a lot of useful information for learning with Google tools.
Closing out a roller coaster of a school year
This week, I wanted to share some end of year digital clean up tips with you. Just like wrapping up your physical classroom at the end of any school year, it is important to wrap up your digital work. These are suggestions of what you can do to tidy things up so that you return to an organized environment after summer break.
Google Classroom:
-
Be sure to return all student work. This can be checked under the To-Do page of Google Classroom.
-
Remove students from old classes, if you prefer not to have students accessing content from your class in the future.
-
Remove old class calendars in Google Calendar (hide or delete them).
-
!! DO NOT delete the folder called Classroom !! from your Google Drive. However, you can move or delete subfolders that it contains, as you tidy up your Google Drive.
-
Archive old classes.
Google Drive/Files:
- Backup any files stored locally (ie: Downloads, desktop files, etc) on your device to Google Drive.
- When you are back in the district and on the network, save any files from your H: Drive to Google Drive.
- Tidy up your Google Drive. Put loose files away into folders/subfolders, address anything left in your priority workspaces, rename or recolor any old folders, etc. Tidying up your email is a good idea, too. Put away loose emails, address anything that may need responses, organize folders.
- If you are an exiting or retiring employee, to prevent loss of work, transfer ownership of files to others or add them to a shared drive. To take files with you, by using Google Takeout.
Distance Learning Week #10
How to subscribe to other Google Calendars:
When you open the link to a Google Calendar, in the bottom right hand corner you will see a +Google Calendar button. By clicking on that button, it will add the calendar to your own.
Summer learning/enrichment resources for students:
These resources below can be shared out with students and families for summer learning.
Summer learning/enrichment resources for staff:
These resources below are for your personal professional growth.
- Google Applied Digital Skills
- Workbench
-
ICE (Indiana Connected Educators) Conference is FREE and virtual this year. July 20-24th.
- Join GEG Michigan to connect with other Google-using educators around Michigan.
- REMC Association of Michigan virtual courses are great and you can also earn SCECHs
- Michigan Virtual has a plethora of professional learning courses that you can also earn SCECHs for
- Teach with Tech Conference begins on July 27th
- MACUL grants are due June 15th
Distance Learning Week #9
Photo Management:
Check out my photo management presentation. As you are creating end of year highlights of this school year, Google Photos can be a helpful tool to create collages, albums, and animations.
Accessibility:
Accessibility is for everyone. Check out some of the resources are listed below.
-
Eliminate visual noise by toggling to Reader Mode in your Google Chrome browser (There are also extensions for this like Just Read and Reader Mode)
-
Use Voice typing in Google Docs (Open a Google Doc, click on Tools and select Voice typing)
-
OpenDyslexic Font extension allows people with dyslexia to read text more easily by making the bottom of the letters bolded
-
It’s important to add alt text to images so that screen readers can read them
-
Push to Talk is a useful extension that allows you to mute and unmute by using the spacebar on your keyboard
-
Check out Google Accessibility Features Youtube Playlist and Chrome & Chrome OS Accessibility Youtube Playlist for more
Meaningful Feedback:
Use media to create multi-modal forms of feedback for students. Going beyond text comments can positively impact students’ perception of the quality of feedback. Feedback that feels personalized is more likely to inspire students to continue working to develop their skills.
-
Chrome Capture is a great tool that can help you create GIFs to use for student feedback
-
Previous tools I’ve shared including: Talk & comment, Kaizena, and Screencastify can also be leveraged for the purpose of feedback
-
Mote is another voice commenting tool for Google Docs
Gamification:
Gamification can help with student engagement. Many of you have been using Kahoot, Breakout EDU, and utilizing the game board template I shared with you last week. Blow are more resources to use for gamifying learning remotely.
- Factile is a Jeopardy style game
- Check out the GooseChase EDU Game Library or create your own
- Flippity has templates for scavenger hunts, quiz show, bingo, mad libs, matching games, and more
