Warning: Don't Lose Your Announcements & Discussions

When you create a new Announcement or Discussion and try to navigate away from the page without saving, Canvas will now confirm whether or not it should leave the page - with an unsaved changes warning message. This feature helps instructors avoid losing entire announcements or discussions inadvertently.

A great tip to avoid losing work is to create your draft Announcements & Discussions offline, in a Google or Word Doc., TextEdit, Pages, or other open source document creator.  Once you have rewritten and polished your work, simply copy and paste it into Canvas. This, too, helps prevent lost work.

In fact, this is a reminder Announcement you can share with your students right now. To learn more about Announcements, visit the Canvas Guides. 

The details for these new features have been sourced from Canvas’ User Guides.  Please feel free to contact me (mwiseman@baypath.edu) for any questions you may have about using Canvas for your Bay Path class.

Supported Web Browswers

As of May 24, 2014 Canvas will no longer support Internet Explore 9.  After that date, Internet Explorer 10 will be the oldest version of IE supported. We find Canvas functions superbly in: Chrome, Safari and Firefox web browsers and Canvas supports the last two versions of every web browser release.

We also highly recommend  updating to the newest version of whatever browser you are using as well as the most up-to-date Flash plug-in.  Once you update, double check your web browser privacy settings as well.

For more information on supported web browsers, visit: Which Browsers Does Canvas Support?

The details for these new features have been sourced from Canvas’ User Guides.  Please feel free to contact me (mwiseman@baypath.edu) for any questions you may have about using Canvas for your Bay Path class.

User Profile and Images

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Posting your picture to your Canvas User Profile really helps your students to get to know you and adding a couple sentences about you [included in your bio] models ‘best practices’ for your online classroom. Canvas has made it even easier to upload pictures to your profile.

Users can still upload an existing picture from their computer. When uploading a picture, users can also drag a picture from their desktop and drop it into the uploader. Pictures can be cropped and resized.

Now, Canvas also allows you to "Take a Picture" directly from your computer.

The user’s profile picture folder will automatically store a copy of the saved profile picture. When a new picture is saved in a user’s profile, the new picture will override the existing picture file in the user’s folder.

Notes:

• Canvas no longer allows users to select a picture from previously uploaded profile pictures. 
• The Take a Picture option is not supported when using Safari or Internet Explorer. Canvas responds best within the Chrome browser 

Take 2 minutes to double check if you have uploaded a photo to your Canvas profile, if not, try adding a new picture and remember to add a few sentences to your Bio.

Your students really do appreciate getting to know you.

The details for these new features have been sourced from Canvas’ User Guides.  Please feel free to contact me (mwiseman@baypath.edu) for any questions you may have about using Canvas for your Bay Path class.