Built in Annotation Assignment Type in Canvas

 

Annotations in Canvas

Using the Built in Annotation Assignment Type in Canvas

Created by Scott Aten, September 16, 2021

New for this school year is the option of creating an "Annotation" type assignment for students in Canvas as a part of an online submission assignment.  This type of assignment will totally replace the use of Kami for this type of activity.  The challenge with the free version of Kami has been the saving of student work and then getting the annotated copy turned into the teacher.  All of these issue go away by using the annotation option built into Canvas.

What can the student's do?

• complete the annotation assignment directly in Canvas.
• add text boxes to a document
• draw lines on a document
• highlight on a document
• add comments to a document
• easily submit the assignment when finished

See how it works

Remember you can easily convert a paper document to a PDF with any building copy machine, so go ahead and eliminate all the paper on your desk by using this awesome feature of Canvas.

Please keep in mind if you ever need to schedule me for a 1-1 help session, these can be scheduled using this link.

[Green Technology Training Center]

[Click here to go to the YouTube Channel]

For more helpful information and the archive of previous posts, look for items in the menu to the left.

Green Local Schools

Tech Integration Team

 

Save your Responses in Forms

Now you can go back into a form/quiz and finish later

Created by Scott Aten, May 13, 2021

Green has volunteered to be a part of a Google Beta program that will allow a student to begin a form/quiz and save the responses prior to submitting the form.  This means a student could begin a quiz and then come back and finish the quiz later. The answers they have entered will be saved for up to 30 days making it so they can come back into a quiz and finish it anytime within that time period.

How can this help?

• Student is taking a quiz and they loose power on the Chromebook.  Now they can come back into the quiz and finish without starting over.
• If a student loses WiFi,  once they are back online they can resume a quiz picking up where they left off.
• Students begin a quiz but were not able to finish because the period ended.  Now they can resume the next class period.

The responses are auto saved, so there is nothing they need to do to get this to work.  To get back into the quiz, all they will need it the link to the quiz.

We are a part of a beta program on this feature, so there may be some bugs, but I tried it on a form that I made and it worked as expected.  Just keep this in mind while the feature is in beta.

Please keep in mind if you ever need to schedule me for a 1-1 help session, these can be scheduled using this link.

[Green Technology Training Center]

[Click here to go to the YouTube Channel]

For more helpful information and the archive of previous posts, look for items in the menu to the left.

Green Local Schools

Tech Integration Team

 

Update to Google Meet

Google Meet will have some changes in May 2021

Created by Scott Aten, April 22, 2021

Google continues to listen to teachers and is trying to make Google Meet an effective tool to use for teaching remotely.  Coming in May you will see some changes happening to Google Meet.  Many of these changes are things I have heard teachers ask for all year.  Here are some of the highlights:

• Ability to remove the "You are presenting" box allowing you to still see all the students while presenting your screen
• Ability to remove your video as one of the tiled cameras
• Move all the Meet controls to the bottom of the screen for easy access
• Move the Mute and End Call button away from each other so students don't accidently exit the Meet

While we do not have access to all these features at this time, Eric Curts has put out a video showing what all of these new features will look like when they arrive.  It is a good idea to watch this short video so you are not taken by surprise when the change happens.  We are a part of the Google Rapid Release program so we can expect to see these changes as early as May 3rd, but may take up to 15 days to hit everyone's account.  These changes will also impact the experience students will have as well.  BDA teachers may want to let their students know that Meet may look different for them in May.  These changes do not impact any of the other features you have been using, but are primarily "look and feel" type changes.

Please keep in mind if you ever need to schedule me for a 1-1 help session, these can be scheduled using this link.

[Green Technology Training Center]

[Click here to go to the YouTube Channel]

For more helpful information and the archive of previous posts, look for items in the menu to the left.

Green Local Schools

Tech Integration Team

Create a Tab Canvas Page

 

Canvas

Organize a student's week with a tabbed Canvas Page

Created by Scott Aten, March 18, 2021

There is a lot of great content that has been created this year in Canvas courses throughout the district.  In working with teachers in each building, I have been exposed to a lot of different ideas on how to provide course content using the tools in Canvas.  I have to give a shout out to Lisa Pafford, GHS Health Teacher, for showing me this cool trick.

The idea here is to create a Canvas page that has built in tabs across the top where each tabbed section has different content.  In this example we make a tab for each day of the week.

It is not difficult to set this up and it actually allows you to build an entire week's worth of content all on one Canvas page.  I created a video that demonstrates how to set this up and how to begin to add content to the page tabs.

The code used in the video can be found on this Google Doc.  Simply open the document and copy and paste the code as shown in the video.  

If you end up using this trick, please drop Lisa an email (paffordlisa@greenlocalschools.org) letting her know you used the cool thing she found.

If you have another technique that you have found in Canvas, please let me know so I can share it with everyone.

Please keep in mind if you ever need to schedule me for a 1-1 help session, these can be scheduled using this link.

[Green Technology Training Center]

[Click here to go to the YouTube Channel]

For more helpful information and the archive of previous posts, look for items in the menu to the left.

Green Local Schools

Tech Integration Team

Data Available in Canvas through New Analytics

 

Canvas

Data Available in Canvas through New Analytics

Created by Scott Aten, March 8, 2021

One nice feature of Canvas that we have not talked a lot about this year is the data available to teachers within the course. Canvas has actually made some updates to this section throughout the school year.  This post will cover some of the types of data you can find using "New Analytics".

New Analytics
The "New Analytics" button can be found on the homepage of any Canvas course in the left menu.  It is called "New" because of the updates they have made to the analytics tool during the school year.

Upon entering the "New Analytics" area, teachers are given the Average Course Grade.  This will give you an idea of the overall grade for the course.

Below this score is a menu of options: Course Grade, Weekly Online Activity, Students, and Reports.  The first three are all able to be filtered by section or viewed as a whole course if your sections are cross-listed.

Course Grade
The Course Grade area allows you to see the average course grade for student submitted assignments.  This graph can be changed from "Display shapes" to a "Data Table" by clicking the three dots in the upper right corner.  By using the "Display shapes" option, teachers can get more information on individual assignments. To access this simply click on the dots themselves.  This screen also provides a quick and easy way to message students about the assignment.  For example, a teacher could contact students whose grade falls below a certain score, are missing the assignment, or are late on the assignment.

Weekly Online Activity
The Weekly Online Activity shows average page views and average participation. There is a graph that can be changed to a table much like the Course Grades could be changed. By clicking on one of the dots in the graph, the teacher can see how specific students viewed pages or participated during a specific time period.  Below the graph/table is a list of all the resources connected with the course.  This information includes overall page views and participation as well.  

Students
The Students area allows teachers to dig into information on specific students.  The initial  screen shows the students grade, percentage of assignments turned in on time, when they last interacted with the course, when they last accessed the course, number of pages they have viewed, and total number of participations.

When a teacher clicks on a specific student's name, additional information becomes available.

Reports
The reports area is newer to Canvas Analytics, and can provide teachers with some good data.  Reports come as a CSV file which basically is a file that will open in a spreadsheet. Teachers will download this file and open it in Excel on a desktop or Google Sheets if it has been saved to Google Drive.  There are several different reports that can be run.

Since the report opens in a spreadsheet program, teachers can filter the data in many different ways to interpret the data.

The best way to understand all that New Analytics can show a teacher is to get in there and click around.  

Please keep in mind if you ever need to schedule me for a 1-1 help session, these can be scheduled using this link.

[Green Technology Training Center]

[Click here to go to the YouTube Channel]

For more helpful information and the archive of previous posts, look for items in the menu to the left.

Green Local Schools

Tech Integration Team