Ed Tech Apps

Canvas Tip #3: Clean the Dashboard.

amcdonnell Google ,

I am enrolled in and have published a lot of Canvas Courses. I’m in 14 of them and they’re still active, but I need not see them all the time. To clean up my dashboard, I customized the course cards that are displayed upon login. From the dashboard menu on the left, I click on “courses” then “all courses.”

Try it. You’ll see a small star icon next to your courses. Get rid of the star next to courses you don’t want on your dashboard. Suddenly, you have a much cleaner front-page interface to work with. Here’s how. Click “Start” below.

4 STEPS

1. The first step is to click courses

Step 1 image

2. Click All Courses

Step 2 image

3. Scroll down and click highlight

Step 3 image

4. That’s it. Now only these cards will appear on my dashboard. Note: If all courses are unstarred- ALL of them will appear on the dashboard.
BTW, if you like this tutorial tool, it is called IORAD and it is a Chrome Extension.

Step 4 image

Here’s an interactive tutorial

** Best experienced in Full Screen (click the icon in the top right corner before you begin) **

https://www.iorad.com/player/1937386/How-to-clean-up-the-Canvas-Dashboard-

 

Using Google Doc’s Voice Regonition Tool

vschwoebel Faculty ,

Google Docs Voice Recognition feature is a powerful dictation tool that’s often overlooked. Once you get started, you can even use commands to edit and format your document. For example, “Select paragraph,” “italics,” or “Go to the end of the line.” Check out the video below to see how to get started with Voice Recognition.

Note: this is only available when using your Chrome browser.

 

Flipgrid – A Video Tool for the Classroom

amcdonnell Faculty , ,

 

Flipgrid is a video discussion platform. It couldn’t be easier for students to use as they simply click a big green + button and begin to talk. As a teacher, I can control how long their responses are supposed to be.

I used the tool this year in two similar but different ways. I have my students journal every couple of weeks usually via a blog or google docs. Instead of a written journal, a couple of times I asked students to do a video journal.

Here is one such example as this student reflects on an in-class simulation. It gets even richer as students begin discussion threads and go back and forth discussing and debating ideas. Below is a screenshot of a portion what I see as a teacher. You can see each video has its own unique shareable url. I can easily comment on any of these posts with a typed or filmed comment. You can also see that “4th wall” of teaching is partially penetrated. These kids are viewing what their classmates have to say. Blake had 11 classmates view his responses. The discussion moved beyond the classroom.

I also used it for quick status reports as my students did a month long maker-space project. Simply clicking through the video responses was a quick and easy way for me to gauge student progress.

Stacy Roshan is a Flipgrid superuser and posts quite a bit on her own blog about Flipgrid. Here are some highlights.

 

 

Find Quality Videos More Quickly

amcdonnell Faculty , ,

I frequently check YouTube for videos for my classes. I’ve found some gems, but I’ve also waded through some dreck.  This video shows how to use YouTube Playlists to find quality videos much more quickly, curate videos for your classes, and to use playlists in lesson plans.

Other video tips, use EdPuzzle to further edit YouTube videos. As FCS teachers, we all have the extension added to YouTube. Just click Edit with edpuzzle.

Finally, if concerned about distracting thumbnails for other videos and content, use a tool like safeyoutube.