All posts by Stephanie Olson

I am an Instructional Technology Specialist supporting LHS, CMMS, and MMS. I have a BA in English, MA in English, and a MA in Secondary Education; I taught middle school and high school ELA for 11 years before transitioning to a role in educational technology. I love collaborating and working with teachers on how best to integrate technology into their curriculum to create a dynamic learning experience for students. I also love showcasing how technology can engage students and bridge gaps by making content more accessible for all learners. I am very excited to be a part of such a dynamic team and innovative district.

Canvas Apply Score to Ungraded 

Have you wondered about how you can quickly address ungraded assignments in your gradebook? This tip showcases how to apply 0 (or another score) throughout a grade book in just a couple of clicks. The Apply Score to Ungraded Assignments feature allows scores to be applied to multiple ungraded submissions at once (similar to set default score which can only be done ...

Canvas Message Students Who – and Observers! 

As we transitioned to the Canvas Gradebook, one feature that many teachers missed was the ability to message both students and parents/observers. Canvas was listening and now when you choose to "message students who" (have a missing assignment, low score, etc.) you can include the observers!   Navigate to Grades Choose an assignment Select the 3 dots and ...

Canvas – Organizing your Dashboard 

You can make your dashboard more personal by editing the names of courses (this is on your end only) changing course colors, dragging and dropping your course icons to be in a specific order, or use the Star system to determine which courses are on your dashboard.   Editing name and color  Choose a course and ...

Canvas Pesky Imported Assignment, Move them in Bulk! 

Are Imported Assignments the bane of your Canvas existence? You can quickly delete the entire assignment group and move the assignments at the same time.   Open Assignments Find the Imported Assignments groupFrom the 3 dots, choose “Delete”  Choose the group you want to move the assignments to and the Imported Assignments will be gone and your ...

Canvas Setting an Assignment Default Score 

Did you collect an assignment on paper and just need to quickly add a score for all students? Or maybe you want to add a score for students who have not submitted? You have the option, by assignment, to add a default score.  Open Grades for your course Find the assignment you want to score Using the ...

Quickly Add Links in Canvas and Anywhere CTRL-K 

CTRL+K might just be your new best friend. When you need to insert a link (for an image or highlighted text) you can quickly copy the link from the original source (CTRL+C) and then in Canvas or other website/document choose CTRL+K to launch the add-link. Here is an example in Canvas after highlighting the text:  ...

Canvas – Moving Grade Total to Front in Gradebook 

The tip this week is just to make grading in your course a little easier. You may choose to move the Canvas grade “Total” to the front in order to easily see student grades. This helps when transferring grades from Canvas to Skyward and ultimately saves from scrolling down to see the grade total.   Open ...

Canvas – Setting Course Default Time

We are creating a series of posts as a part of the "All the Canvas tips you never knew you needed!" We will share a weekly tip until we run out of them. If you have ideas you would like to share, please feel free to pass them to your Ed Tech Lead or Tech ...

Canvas Grading Periods for HS Semesters

Grading periods are back! We explored using them when our secondary courses were yearlong in the 2020-2021 school year, but we have brought them back to our high school semesters in the form of quarter grading periods. Why did we do this? One of the questions that arose often this past year was how a ...

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Actively Learn, Revisiting a Favorite

It has been a while since we have updated you about Actively Learn, but this comprehensive reading tool allows for such distinctive features that it needs to be revisited. If you have not used Actively Learn recently, I urge you to pop in and check out their recent additions such as an updated Lexile search, ...