We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our students on August 31, many who have not been on campus for a year and a half. We want to make sure everything is ready to go and one of those spaces is Canvas.
Changes and Tips for the 2021-2022 School Year
As you may have noticed, course templates were added this year. The course template directly relates to the ISD Course Checklist and meets all of the requirements and recommendations for a course home page and course navigation. It has even been checked for accessibility. Each school can choose to what extent the template is used and the flexibility in course design you might have. Please check with your school admin team and tech committee for more details.
Since schools will have the option to sync to Skyward or predominately use the Canvas gradebook (again defer to your admin team/tech committee), we are removing the auto-check for “sync to SIS.” This will be a change from last year where each new assignment or quiz automatically defaulted to “sync to SIS.” If your school site is using last years process of syncing regularly, please make sure you are checking this. We will work on developing processes for term grade syncing, so stay-tuned.
You will notice more courses on your dashboard. OSPI is requiring all courses to be term based this year, so no more yearlong courses. There are pro’s to this (and some challenges). A tip we have is when you import your course content from last years courses or your sandbox, you choose “specific content” rather than the “all content.” You can then pick what is relevant to the term rather than trying to sort through the whole year’s worth of content. We also suggest adjusting due dates (start date from Tri1/Semester1 last year was Sept 1 and change it to August 31). Adjusting the due dates will help with getting ready for the school year.
You can still do “copy to” as well by module, assignment, page, etc. This process is more fine-tuned. Just make sure you are sending it to the right course term. You can identify your course by R1, R2, or R3 for trimesters and S1 or S2 for semester. You can also see the A, B, C as well!
Your course navigation was populated with the basics. To add more, you can go to settings and then the navigation tab and add apps as needed. You will also notice you have a School Resources app. Please leave that available. It will not work until August 31 when we make the course template visible. Then the page will be active. You will not need to edit that page, it will be edited by your admin team or responsible school team.
Getting Started
For more on how to get started for the school year, please check out the Canvas 101 for Teachers. Please use the first module “Canvas Beginning of the Year Setup”. Additional modules are there for your guidance as well. For more support or questions, please contact your Ed Tech TOSA.
BITS AND PIECES 