Category: Canvas

Reminders for Semester 2/ Quarter 3 Canvas Courses

Publishing Canvas Courses

As a reminder, please publish your Semester 2/ Quarter 3 courses in Canvas.

Students only have access to Published courses. If a course is Unpublished they will not see it on their dashboard. Please note that you if you publish a course you cannot unpublish a course after you have assigned something to a student.
Reminder: It is a contractual obligation to have your course published and an absent support page available to students/families.

Reminder: Customizing Your Canvas Dashboard

As the new semester has begun, some courses may look like they’re not on canvas, when really they’re just not on the Dashboard. Students and staff can all customize the dashboard to show only the courses they wish to see. To customize the teacher or student dashboard to show certain courses please see the graphic below:

Preparing your Canvas Pages for the Second Semester

Especially for those that have a first semester or Quarter 2 Canvas course ending soon, here are some Canvas considerations:

For high school Semester 1 / Q2 courses, Teachers will have access to make edits, give feedback, and grade assignments in Canvas until 11:59 pm on February 1, 2023 (middle school date is January 31, 2023). After that date, the course will have read-only access. For Year Long courses, read and write access will remain until the end of the school year with the exception of grades for the past terms. Grades will not be editable.
High school students will have access to participate in FIRST SEMESTER courses until 11:59 pm on January 30, 2023 (middle school date is January 27, 2023). After that date, students will have read-only access to the course (with the exception of quiz questions to which they will not have access).
- If you do not want students to have read-only access, you will need to update your course settings.
- If you want to extend student access past 1/30 for assignment submissions, see #4 below.
Students will continue to have access in Year Long Courses to submit assignments with due dates in the first semester unless you have an available until date of JAN. 30 or earlier. You can edit those dates in bulk by following the steps here.
By default, students enrolled in a Canvas course will lose access to submit material when the course ends. To extend access for students to a Canvas course past the term end date, you must make the adjustment PRIOR to the last day of the course while their enrollment is active. Access cannot be reinstated after a course concludes. If you want to extend access to your students to be able to submit coursework towards a first semester / quarter 2 Canvas course, you will need to change the end date in your course settings to override the term end date in the system at least 2 days prior to the end of the term so it is captured in subsequent syncs. See https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-change-the-start-and-end-dates-for-a-course/ta-p/452354 for more guidance on this matter. An assignment’s available until date may also need to be adjusted. Please note, you will need to bear in mind MISTAR syncing will end due to grade submission deadlines and you may have to work with your records office to update a report card if submitted late work results in a grade change.
Teachers can copy the content from their Semester 1 / Quarter 2 course to their Semester 2 course (and beyond) even after the course has concluded.
TEACHERS please remember to PUBLISH your Semester 2 / Quarter 3 courses no later than the start of the term.
If you’re considering cross listing your courses, please revisit this blog post https://tech.pccsk12.com/how-to-cross-list-your-semester-2-courses/

Need Canvas Help?

Canvas is an important learning tool in our district. We hope that you continue to find it a valuable teaching and communication tool. If you are new to the district or have questions come up about it, we want you to be aware of several resources that are available to you.

First, click the “Help” icon on the Global Navigation Menu. For general and common questions try searching the Canvas guides. If your problem or question is unique and specific to your situation you can chat online or call the Canvas Support hotline. You can be connected with a support agent that can help you almost immediately.

If you would like to slowly browse resources, please check out our resources at the P-CCS Tech website, https://tech.pccsk12.com/canvas-lms/

If you are instructional staff working on meeting your PD expectations, please note we have a number of courses including the following listed below (all of them are 3 hours) that can help increase your understanding of how to use Canvas effectively available for you in the Catalog. https://catalog.pccsk12.com/

Canvas 1.0 (new)
Canvas 2.0
Canvas 3.0
Canvas in the Face to Face Classroom
Simplify and Streamline your Elementary Classroom with Canvas (new)

As always, please submit a tech ticket if you have any questions. https://links.pccsk12.com/helpdesk

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Gamify with Canvas and Ditch Summit

Many teachers have heard of break-out style lessons that build problem-solving and collaboration skills in students. They may be used more often to help engage students as holiday breaks inch closer. Did you know you can create your own digital break-outs with a Canvas module? You can go beyond a one time game and gamify an entire unit with a storyline. Check out the guest blog post on Ditch that Textbook for more information. https://ditchthattextbook.com/gamify-canvas-lms/

While you are there, you might consider signing up for the annual, free Ditch Summit.

In this online “summit” there are nine video presentations from awesome presenters on topics related to tech and solid teaching and learning. Including previous years’ sessions, you’ll have access to more than 80 video presentations!

This year, it’s scheduled for December 12, 2022, to January 6, 2023.

Get registered for free at: DitchSummit.com.

HOW IT WORKS: New presentations are released every day. They remain available until the end of the summit so you can re-watch or catch up on any you’ve missed. They’re pre-recorded, so you can watch them whenever you want until the summit closes. After that, the summit ends and the videos are unavailable to watch anymore.

This year’s speakers include:
Ken Shelton, education leader and techquity advocate
Cornelius Minor, author and consultant, The Minor Collective
Jed Dearybury and Julie Jones, authors and playful learning advocates
Holly Clark, author, speaker, and blended learning expert
Amanda Sandoval, history and EL teacher
Hedreich Nichols, consultant and award-winning educator
Mandy Froelich, educator mental health change agent
Al Thomas, educator, filmmaker, photographer, YouTuber
Michele Eaton, online academy director, author, speaker

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Declutter Your Canvas Dashboard

As we transition from out October Professional Development day to our November PD window, you might want to declutter your Canvas dashboard. To do that, go to https://pccsk12.instructure.com/courses and click on the star next to the courses you want to be visible on the dashboard. Leave any courses you don’t want to see unfilled. When you return to the dashboard, only the course with filled stars will be visible.

🌟🌟🌟BONUS Tip: You can drag and drop the course tiles on your dashboard to rearrange them in any order you would like.

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2022 Fall Canvas Updates

This fall, Canvas has rolled out a few great updates. Check them out below!

Custom Images in the Icon Maker

Earlier this year, Canvas launched an icon maker. It allows you to create custom images and buttons for your course. The icons are saved in the course file and can be updated easily in one place. At first, the images to add to the icon were very limited, but Canvas now allows you to upload and edit an image. Here’s a video demonstrating the process.

Studio Video Editing

Basic cut and trim video editing options are available for Studio media. This update allows media owners to easily edit media within Studio itself, rather than having to edit media in a third-party editing software. Take a closer look here.

Schedule Page Publishing (coming 10/15)

You will have the option to schedule a date and time that page is published. Find more information here.

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Google Assignments 1.3–A Closer Look

At the beginning of the year, we updated to the Google Assignment LTI 1.3 in Canvas (blog post). This provided important security updates and the new option to grade a Google Assignment using the Google Feedback Tool (that has been in place) or the Canvas Speedgrader. As you might have noticed, it has caused some subtle changes in the workflows for students and teachers. We have done our best to summarize the differences in the presentation below. Click the option to see a side-by-side comparison between the Google Feedback Tool and Canvas Speedgrader.

If you have not used Google Assignments before, it allows each student to get a copy of a Google file that is automatically organized in their Drive and shared with the teacher. Additionally, the teacher can view students progress on the assignment as they work. Here’s a tutorial to set up a Google Assignment.

If you still have questions about the workflows, please submit a tech ticket, we have done our best to test it extensively.

Google LTI Feedback compared by Kaelyn Bullock

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Trouble Syncing Canvas Grades to MiStar?

If you are running into errors with your grades passing from Canvas to MiStar, check out the resources below. First, you’ll want to make sure it is set up correctly. Most importantly, you want to check that your Assignment Groups match your MiStar Gradebook Categories.

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Tips for Cross-listed Courses

Whether you are new to crosslisting or have done it for awhile, review this list to help run it as efficiently as possible. Crosslisting should only be done at the beginning of a term (prior to any student submissions so to avoid their loss).

Be Sure To:

Keep “People” hidden on the Course Navigation Menu to protect student privacy
Change the course name so students don’t get confused if their scheduled section meets at a different time
If you want to use discussions, set it up as a group discussion so students are only interacting with people in their section

Streamline Your Workflow:

You can assign things (especially quizzes) per section to customize availability times and due dates
You can sort Speedgrader submissions by section
You can sort the Gradebook by section

Canvas Crosslisting Tips by Kaelyn Bullock

Please submit a tech ticket if you have additional questions.

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Action Required: Publish Your 22-23 Courses

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).

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

Rest assured, students will not be able to access the course until the term start date. You can verify this under the course Settings (and adjust if desired).

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.

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