Category: Blog

Using Canvas can feel overwhelming if you are new to it or haven’t done much with it since the 20-21 school year. Want an easy place to start? Go to the calendar.

Once there you can add assignments, course events (including recurring events), personal events, and appointment groups. When you open the Calendar, think about upcoming tests, due dates, and reminders. Click on the associated day and add it to the calendar.  If you need to change a due date, you just need to drag and drop it to a new date.

If you create an event from Calendar, you add a minimal amount of information and you have the choice to click “More Options” to add more direction.

This is a great way to get started with Canvas to share important assignments and events with students and families. Take a look at a secondary student’s calendar below:

Introducing a new series, Things I Wish I Would Have Known: Canvas Edition. We will highlight things we wish we might have done differently when we started using Canvas and what you might consider updating in your course going forward. When back to school time hits it can be overwhelming to consider what updates to make in your Canvas course. Our hope with this series is that you will consider some changes you can make for next year and start implementing some of those new ideas now.

Three Big Reasons to Try Google Assignments in Canvas

• If you used the predecessor to Google Assignments, Cloud Assignments, they are being deprecated in June 2024. Learn more about this in our earlier blog post. If you have any assignment that look like the one below, please be sure to take action.

• If you have Google Document that you ask students to make a copy of, you may be creating unknown barriers for students. Many students forget if they have already copied and started an assignment. If they did already start it, they may not be able to find it again. With Google Assignments, each student receives a labeled copy organized in a dedicated Drive folder, making it easy to keep track of submissions, and peak and their progress while they work.
  • In earlier years using Canvas, some teachers did not like it because:
    • You couldn’t use the Canvas Speedgrader, you had to use the Google grader–you now have the option to grade with Speedgrader.
    • People reported problems with it. In the early years of Canvas, there were a lot of problems talked about but these days I seldom hear of an issue.
• One of the standout features of Assignments is the availability of originality reports. These reports scan student submissions against hundreds of billions of web pages and millions of books, helping you identify potential instances of plagiarism or missed citations. Each course is allotted five originality reports. When enabled students can even check over their originality report up to 3 times to help catch their errors. This feature would be an excellent reason to give Google Assignments a try before the end of the year.

Tutorial: Create a Google Assignment

In an effort to better help new students and families understand how to use Canvas, we have created a Student and Family Canvas Orientation. We plan to link it in several places throughout our public-facing websites. For now, it is conveniently linked in the “Help” area in Canvas.

There is a family module and student module. They contain walkthroughs in several formats (video, interactive tutorial, and linked guides).

Individuals don’t need to be be logged into view the course, so you can also share the link directly. Please feel free to spread the word to anyone who would benefit from this resource. We will update this blog post when we add the link in other places.