It's that time of year again...

As we approach the start of a new academic year, I'm sure you're all thinking about your upcoming classes and possibly new ways to reach your students using technology.  Whether you're teaching online or on campus, there are many ways you can use technology to reach your students.  Here are some cool suggestions from an article from THE Journal.

Create a short video - The COL has consistently recommended that faculty record a welcome video for their online courses. Welcome videos can easily be recorded directly within Canvas or uploaded into Canvas if you use other software to create them.  These videos help students get to know you and what to expect from class.  But have you thought about having students create videos for class projects? Students can easily upload videos into Canvas, too, so it's very easy for them to submit their work. This is fun project that keeps students engaged in learning.

Podcasting - Creating podcasts is another way you can engage your students with multimedia technology. You can use them in your teaching, and you can have students produce their own podcasts.  If you're using iPads in your classroom, there are many apps to use for recording audio.

Creating Infographics - You've probably seen infographics online - we've shared a few here on this blog before...  Infographics are a great way to visually display information, often statistical data.  They can also be fun to create.  I created one for a recent conference presentation on orientations for online students using Piktochart, a site that provides limited free access and more sophisticated features for a fee.  Creating an infographic can be a great assignment for students - it's a fun way for them to be creative and display the results of their research.

Using screencasts to explain things - Screencasting is the term for recording what is on the screen of your computer and narrating it to make a video.  These videos are a great way to demonstrate how to do something on a computer.  Screencasts can be made with many free and low cost software applications.  I use Snagit for recording quick screencasts.  Snagit is inexpensive with educator pricing, and the company that makes it also has a free version with reduced functionality, Jing.  You can also record screencasts using Tegrity, a software solution supported by the ITS department. Contact them to get information about training and access to Tegrity.  Want to do screencasts on your iPad? EdTechTeacher has a great list of recommended screencasting apps. You can make screencasts to provide instructional content to your students, or you can ask your students to create and share their own screencasts.

As the new academic year approaches, remember that the COL is available to support online faculty and students in the use of Canvas and other instructional technologies for online education. Did you know that the Center for Online Learning is now part of Academic Affairs? This summer our team became part of the Division of Research and Academic Resources and we're looking forward to working with our new team to provide more exciting professional development opportunities and support services for all our online faculty! We are still located in the lower level of Deepwood Hall with the ITS department to allow us to work closely with the Tech Support Center team to ensure the best technology-related support for online faculty and students.  The new COL office space is amazing - if you haven't seen the newly renovated Technology Suite in the lower level of Deepwood, please stop by and visit us sometime! We look forward to seeing many of you back on campus soon!

Canvas Brings Back Chat (plus new Profiles)!

EXTRA, EXTRA: Exciting Canvas News!

Effective immediately, the “Chat” function has returned to your Canvas classrooms.  As you may recall, the chat feature was disabled a few months back while Canvas worked on a more appropriate and effective tool... and they have delivered!

The Chat tool in Canvas allows students and teachers to interact in real time. Chat makes it easy to communicate with your students live and all in one place.  Instructors can use chat to:

• Give students an opportunity to immediately contact them when they are online
• Conduct virtual office hours
• Conduct group discussion
• Conduct study sessions
• Regularly contact students who are challenged by course content and need encouragement

To enable “Chat” in your classroom, be sure that you’ve enabled the feature in the left-hand navigation menu of your course.  When you click on “Chat”, you immediately enter the chatroom!

BONUS!:  Check out the Canvas Guides to learn how you can view Chat history!

A new and improved “Profile” tool has also just been released.  Until today, we’ve been able to add a picture, contact information and connect services like Google Docs and Facebook.  Now, by popular demand, we can also add a “Bio”, custom web links, and more!  The Canvas Guides detail each new feature; if you’re curious to learn more, check them out!  To get started with editing your new profile, log into Canvas, click on your name in the upper-right corner, then click the “Edit Profile” button.  It’s as simple as that!

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

Resources for Integrating Technology in the Classroom

If you're looking for ways to enhance your classes using technology, you'll want to check out and bookmark these resources!  The sites below provide some great ideas about apps and other online tools you can use to make your courses more interactive, engaging and exciting for students.  Also, if you're teaching future educators, these are good resources to share with your students.

Google Tools - This article is entitled "25 Ways Google Can Make You a Better Teacher," but they're continually updating it and the list is actually up to 36 items as of this posting.  This list contains easy ideas and covers topics such as Google Drive, Google Earth, Google Scholar and YouTube (which, if you didn't know, is a Google service). It's a great article because the list is written in a very brief and easy to read manner, and gives ideas that are good starting points to get you thinking of how you can use Google tools.  And since Bay Path students and faculty all have Google accounts and access to these tools, they're easy to integrate into your curriculum.

Lots of Online Tools for Education - You've probably heard of tools such as Jing, Vimeo and VoiceThread, but you may not be familiar with what the tools do and how to use them.  The image in the middle of this page shows icons for a number of popular (and not-so-well known) online educational tools, and each icon is a link to information about the tool.  It's a great resource to quickly learn about a tool and get started using it.  It's certainly worth taking a look at this page.

Writing Apps - This one is particularly useful to share with our Early Childhood and Elementary Education students.  This site showcases apps, most for young students, that helps students develop their writing skills.  From sentence building, to mind mapping, to learning to write letters, these apps help with a variety of writing skills.  The site also contains additional lists of literacy apps for topics such as phonics and spelling. My 7-year-old daughter has used some of these and enjoyed them.

I hope you found these sites useful and that you find something new you can use in your next course!

Straight From The Horse's Mouth

Ever wondered where the folks from the Center for Online Learning get their Canvas information?  Well, I’ll let you in on the secret.  Instructure Canvas does a great job getting their institutions ready for new releases, and they document the upcoming changes on their Product Release Notes page.

We review the upcoming changes and try to present the most relevant changes to you via this blog.  This doesn’t mean that we don’t encourage you to explore what’s out there for yourselves, though!

This weekend, you might notice that a few quiz settings have been relocated.  If you have a few moments, check out the video below from Canvas that highlights this, as well as a few other changes.

You’ll also want to be aware that Canvas no longer supports Internet Explorer 8.  Canvas supports the last two versions of every browser release.  Internet Explorer 10 is now available, which means you can use this version or Internet Explorer 9 with Canvas, worry free, as well as up to date versions of other popular web browsers.

The details for these new features have been sourced from Canvas’ User Guides and Product Release Notes.  Please feel free to contact the Center for Online Learning at Bay Path College (online@baypath.edu) for any questions you may about using Canvas for your Bay Path class.

Something Looks Different...

If you’re a savvy Canvas user, you may have noticed a few changes in your classroom this past weekend.  While there were a few “behind the scenes” changes that really don’t impact the typical user, there were a few changes that, as an instructor, you’ll want to be aware of.  Please read on:

Modules

Canvas has made it a little easier to manipulate the modules within your Canvas classroom.  You’ll note that the “View Progress” and “Create a Module” buttons have migrated from the right side of the screen to just above the first module in your classroom.  Additionally, the “Add Content to Module” and “Edit” functions have moved.  You will now find these by clicking on the “gear” icon to the right of the module title.



Quizzes

The Quizzes tool also got a bit of a facelift this past weekend!  While all the options for quizzes have remained the same, quiz settings now appear on a “Settings” tab and look a bit more like typical assignment settings.  While editing a quiz, you’ll now note that quiz questions have their own tab and the “gear” icon will allow you to add/show a rubric or delete the quiz.  



Discussions

In Discussions, instructors will notice the edit button has been moved next to the Gear icon, while the Speedgrader™ and rubric information is now located inside the Gear icon.



Instructors can restrict students from editing or deleting their discussion posts. This permission can be set in the Discussion settings or in the Course Settings under “more options”.



When a reply is edited by a student, instructors will be able to see the date and time the reply was edited. This feature helps instructors know when the edit occurred and if it should affect a course assignment or grade. Students will not see edit notifications unless their reply has been edited by their instructor.

When a reply is deleted by any user, the activity is indicated by a date and time stamp, along with the name of the person who performed the action.

Hopefully these changes make your Canvas experience easier and more enjoyable! As always, please content the Center for Online Learning with any Canvas questions that you may come up... we're here to help!  

The details for these new features have been sourced from Canvas’ User Guides and Product Release Notes.  Please feel free to contact the Center for Online Learning at Bay Path College (online@baypath.edu) for any questions you may about using Canvas for your Bay Path class.