Future Forecast: Green Clouds on the horizon

No, it's not climate change creating Green Clouds.

In fact, Green Clouds will soon be part of your daily forecast as we roll-out Canvas' new Draft State functionality starting July 12, 2014.

Briefly, Draft State will allow content in your Canvas course to exist in an unpublished (draft) state until you click the Green Cloud icon  button and publish your content.

As you create your course content in the Draft State changes you make are visible only to you [the instructors]. Students will only see pages once you have published them, using the Green Cloud icon.
All your unpublished content remains in your control and invisible to students until you are ready to share.

• You will soon have the ability to open a Module and keep specific content 'closed' until you publish it...such as a Discussion, Assignment, Quiz or other Pages.

• Draft State will give you more consistency in the layout and functionality of your Canvas course.

• Canvas' Draft State will give you better global functionality as you work within your online course and enable you to view all the pages in your course,  edit pages, and publish & un-publish pages -all from your course dashboard inside Canvas.

The Draft State changes will soon be second nature to you as you create, manage, and publish content in your Canvas classrooms.  We will be providing more information about Draft State in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
                                                                   

If you have any specific question we would be happy to speak with you directly, please call 413-565-6880 or email us at online@baypath.edu 

Coming to Canvas This Summer

While you enjoy a well-deserved summer break, Canvas will be launching a new Draft State feature and we think you are going to like it. The new Draft State will be officially implemented on July 5, 2014 and we will be offering support to make the transition as seamless as possible.

Draft State allows content in Assignments, Quizzes, Modules, Pages, and Discussions to exist in an unpublished (draft) state. Unpublished content is invisible to students and excluded from grade calculations...until you are ready to 'Publish' your content.

Fast-forward the video below to the 2:05 minute to hear how Draft State will be working in your Canvas courses starting in July.

Once Draft State is enabled you will see changes in:

• Assignments, 
• Quizzes, 
• Modules, 
• Pages, and 
• Discussions 

which will make your interface with Canvas more consistent in layout and functionality.  Additionally, here are some other content-specific changes you’ll see in Draft State:

• Pages will have an Index page and displays page titles
• Individual pages will not include sidebars
• Instructors will be able to select any page to be the front page of their course
• Quizzes will not have to be republished if the content is changed

The Draft State changes will soon be second nature to you as you create and publish your Canvas classrooms.  We will be providing more information about Draft State in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

If you have any specific question we would be happy to speak with you directly, please call 413-565-6880 or email us at online@baypath.edu 

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.