Introducing: TIS Monday Coffee Chats

In late August, the P-CCS Canvas Best Practices were published. https://tech.pccsk12.com/canvas-best-practices/

To help you carry out these practices, the Technology Integration Specialists plan to offer brief (20-25 minutes) sessions before school on Monday mornings. We will provide a rationale for the practice, a quick tutorial, and examples when appropriate. Be sure to bring your favorite morning beverage!

Start Times (feel free to attend at a time that works best for you):

Topics:

  • September 13: Simplify Course Navigation
  • September 20: Create a Welcoming, Informative Home Page
  • September 27: Provide Clear Guidance for Absent Students
  • October 4: Post Assignments Online, via Canvas
  • October 11: Use Announcement Weekly
  • October 18: Use Modules to Organize and Distribute Content

Action Required: Publish Your Canvas Course(s)

click publish on the course card on the dashboard

Please note that each teacher must manually publish the course(s) they want to be visible to students.

Publishing your course only takes one click! From the Course Card on your Dashboard, click “Publish” (see screenshot below).
click publish on the course card on the dashboard

Alternatively, you can open the course home page and click the “Publish” button on the right side of the screen (see screenshot below).

As a reminder, your courses in MISTAR have been auto-populated in Canvas and auto-rostered with students. These are the course(s) you should publish and actively use with students. Any manually created courses should either be copied or cross-listed with your auto-populated courses. You can also cross-list multiple sections of the same course following the instructions provided in one of our previous posts.

Two Key Highlights from Zoom’s August Releases

Zoom's Focus Mode

New and Enhanced Features

  • Focus Mode: In Focus Mode, only the host can see participants’ videos and profile pictures. You can start Focus Mode from the “More” menu on the toolbar of the desktop client. This setting is available at the account, group, or user level setting pages. To use Focus Mode, you must have desktop client version 5.7.3 or higher for Windows or macOS.
  • Authentication exception for single instance of recurring meeting: If only authenticated users are allowed to join the meeting, account owners and admins can allow authentication exceptions for a single instance of a recurring meeting to allow guests to join the meeting. This feature can be enabled in the Meetings > Security Web Portal settings.

Focus Mode

Focus Mode does just that – it helps keep people focused in a Zoom meeting. Designed with educators in mind, Focus Mode places meeting participants in a view where they are only able to see themselves, the host/co-hosts, and the content they are sharing. In this view, hosts and co-hosts can also choose to view participants in gallery view, enabling them to see all participants simultaneously.

Focus Mode

Don’t forget to download the latest version of Zoom to access these features and more.