Tips & Tricks

Canvas Tip #4- The Redirect Tool

amcdonnell Uncategorized , ,

One of my favorite Canvas “hacks” is using the Redirect Tool app to add features to my course menu.  The Redirect Tool can be found under settings > apps. It’s a curving blue  arrow as seen on the right and it allows you to add any webpage to your navigation menu.

 

(the picture below is from Yale’s tech help site)  Click the picture to see detailed step-by-step directions on how to configure the tool. The FCIT team is also available to help you set this up.

I have used this tool to add links to older course websites before I migrated all my material to Canvas. These days, I use it to link to the history reading packet. I’ve also used it to post a “suggestion box” which allows students to give me feedback on the course via a link to a Google Form. Below is a screenshot of how I have used the tool this year.

Here’s a video showing how to do it.

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.

 

Preview Files in Google Drive

Image amcdonnell Faculty , , , , ,

It may sound obvious, but sometimes the best way to find something is to start looking.  Google Drive lets you quickly preview more than 30 file types and quickly flip between files until you find the one you want.

To see a preview of a Google document, right-click on the file name and select “preview.” Once the preview window is open, you can click on the arrows on either side to flip to other files. And right from within the preview, you can watch video files or scroll through multi-page documents.

You can select and copy text from the preview — even for a PDF or Microsoft Word document — or use the zoom buttons to see a file in more detail. Each file preview also gives you one-click access to share, download, print or open a file for editing.

Via: google drive blog