Canvas Quizzes - Quiz Banks

This episode of the 99 will be considerably longer than 99 seconds. Actually, it is over 20 minutes as I am demonstrating start to finish how to set up a quiz using quiz banks. So, sorry about breaking protocol for my site.

Pros:

• Quickly set up a new quiz as long as you have made up questions for your banks
• Students each have a different quiz which is especially handy if sitting side by side in a classroom
• Students can retake a quiz and it will be varied per the quiz bank question options
• Never two quizzes are exactly alike
• You can still tailor a quiz or set one up for a group read aloud by selecting specific questions from the bank
• Quiz questions in a bank can be edited from inside the specific bank

Cons:

• Quiz questions must be edited from inside the specific bank
• When you import a past course, you must rebuild the quiz by relinking the bank

Quizzes and Quiz Banks (22:47)

         

Google Cast for Education (Deep Dive)

Hey there. I have been silent for quite some time. I have not seen anything new worth taking your time. This definitely is worth your time.

The other day a colleague mentioned Google Cast for Education so I had to check it out. Turns out it has been out since summer of 2016 with little fan fair in my little world. When we first went one to one with Chromebooks I wanted to have the ability for students to cast their screens to my big screen. I wanted to add a Google Chromecast dongle but HQ did not allow that so I was shut out. Google Cast is the perfect tool to make that happen with no added devices and is free with G-Suite and an updated Chrome OS above at least version 52. Now students can make presentations, show examples of documents, or anything I want them to cast without collecting slide shows and putting them together for them to display. I have complete control of what goes up to the screen as well and can I can cast from my laptop tablet on the go. I can't wait to actually try this tool out.

My 99 video clip is short and sweet but if you want to try this in your classroom, I would advise checking out the two video clips and or short documentation posted to the document below. This is a deep dive but after you get it set up it will work all year. If you want to set this up and need some support, please feel free to let me know. I would love to help you make that happen.

It took me exactly 34 minutes to input all 144 of my student's emails by setting up very quickly Google Classroom and five groups (classes). There are other ways to import the emails but I do not see any way to do it in bulk. When using Classroom it recognized most of my students when I entered names. The others I had to type out their emails. I put Classroom side by side to my TAC periods and entered.

Google Cast for Education 99 second video

Google Cast for Education document and help videos

Google Cast for Eduction Helpful Page with Videos

10 Canvas Favorite Tips

I have posted a sheet of tips that I currently use with Canvas and have updated this fall. Some of these are old but some may be new to you. I have attached the link to the document to keep this post to a minimum. After each tip there are a few labels that you can look for on the 99 and will take you to a previous screen cast on the subject.
10 Canvas Favorite Tips White paper only, no video here.

Speed Grader Specific Class Selection

When you wish to change from "view all classes" in Speed Grader to a specific class you have to move your curser very fast or the gap between drop downs will cause the specific class selection window to disappear. It can be a little frustrating if you don't move fast. Check out the clip on this post for a quick demo.

Update! It looks like Canvas has patched this problem but you never know if it will rear its head in the future.

Speed Grader Class Selection

Dashboard Course Card Color Overlay

For quite some time we have been able to place an image onto our course cards in Dashboard mode. The problem has been that each image had to have a color tint overlay. I just noticed yesterday that we now have an added option of turning that color overlay off so that the image is clear and free of the tint. Students will still have the option of turning on or off the color tint overlay as it is machine specific. Click the gear at the upper right and also click on or off the overlay. The image below on the left has the overly on and the image to the right has the overlay clicked off. You can still control the color of your class name by clicking the three dots at the upper right of each course image.

Importing Modules - Update

Hey there. I hope your summer is still in full swing and still awesome. Sorry, there is no video in this post. I was noticing that the 2016-2017 courses have been moved and the "controls" taken off. In case you have not yet moved your course or modules into a safe place for this next school year, fear not. It appears that while your courses have been moved out of your "favorites" section they are still, at this time, available in your "all courses" section. You just have to figure out which ones are from last year. You can still import modules or even entire courses normally as I mentioned in my June 20 post. Have a great rest of the summer.

Saving Canvas Content for Next Year

I was just thinking to myself if I had moved my Canvas course content from the completed year into my template so that when headquarters makes access to 2016-2017 unavailable I could still get to it. The answer is that I am moving content as I write this.

Below is a quick step by step, in case your forgot, way to move all your course content into your template for easy access and editing for this fall. Access may not be halted but there is always a chance and I don't want to take that chance. These steps are very easy and take no time at all to complete. Also, if you do not have a "template" you can email the help desk and they will make one up for you with the title that you request. They will not touch "template" titled courses when they archive.

This procedure has not changed. I am just listing it step by step for anyone not remembering how to pull this off.

Start in your course, from this past year, and edit each module title by adding the year of your choice. You may want to add 2016-2017 or what ever you will recognize as coming from last year's course when it gets imported to your template as they will be added to the template and not be replacing any modules. You will want to do this to each module. Also, if you like your home page, edit that page's title (by clicking edit on the page) in such a way that you will recognize it in the tons of pages that you now have created such as "home page for year 2017" or something like that. This is necessary because using this method will import all your pages as well and they will join or even duplicate any that are already in your template.

Open your template course and click settings.

On the right margin click Import Content into this Course.

Content Type: Copy a Canvas Course

Select a Course: Select the course from this last year in which you want to import. You will have to do this to as many course that you wish to import one at a time.

Content: Select All content. You usually check the Select specific content throughout the year.

Options: You can shift dates or remove dates. I would choose remove dates as this will eliminate assignment due dates. I have seen conflicts in setting new dates if the old dates are not removed.

Click Import.

This process should take quite some time depending on how much content you have.

The final step, which I usually wait for until I am ready to import at the start of the new year, is to delete any module that has an old date next to it as the years go by. These modules with old dates can remain it is just that when your template course gets rather large it take forever for it open or even load when you want to look through it for items throughout the following year.

This entire process should have taken you less time than it did to read through this.