Not Out of the Woods Yet...
While we are planning to be primarily on campus for the 21-22 school year we are also continuing to plan for the possibility of Covid variants and related closures and quarantines. You should be ready to transition your classes to fully online with little notice. The following documents are still in full effect with regards to expectations for how to use Canvas as well as required technology competencies.
- Instructional Technology Competencies Checklist
- Instructional Technology Expectations for Teaching and Learning
- Overlake Online Learning Expectations
Preparing for 21-22
If you haven't already, we recommend also reviewing Wrapping up 20-21, Preparing for 21-22.
Canvas Courses are Ready for 21-22
As of July 12, 2021, courses for 21-22 have been synced from Veracross to Canvas and are ready for you to begin building. A few notes:
- Courses are unpublished by default and not visible to students until the teacher chooses to publish them.
- Course rosters are not yet finalized and will continue to change as add/drop progresses throughout the summer.
- Remember you can't message your students until your course is published.
- Green and Gold hybrid sections have been removed from Canvas, so you'll only see sections now for your actual A, B, C Blocks.
What's New?
There are a TON of new features from summer 2020, including personal pronouns in Canvas, Direct Share with Colleagues, and more. We highly recommend revisiting our "What's New in Canvas in 20-21?" article to ensure you're getting the most out of Canvas.
We also have some changes planned for events like religious holidays and school closures populating the MAC to make it easier for you to plan major assignments. Stay tuned!
A Few Best Practices for Setting up Canvas Courses
- Over the years we have assembled these "Beginning of the School Year Canvas Tips for Teachers" article, which you may find helpful. Of note, you will want to double-check your Canvas course settings - hide grade distribution graph, show recent announcements on the homepage, etc.
- Importing is your friend - remember you can import content from any class in which you're a teacher. Canvas has introduced Direct Share which makes it easier to share content between your courses or with your colleagues.
- Rename your course (in the course settings) to make it easier to differentiate from similarly named courses from previous years. We are working on renaming classes by default in the future so that teachers do not need to do so manually.
- Update your course navigation to hide items you don't regularly use.
- Set a course image to display in the dashboard to make finding your course easier for you and your students.
- Add colleagues as observers or teachers in your course if you want to bring more people into the fold or share class content.
Have more questions?
Can't figure out a setting? Want some guidance about how to implement something? Don't hesitate to reach out to tech@overlake.org or to the Teaching & Learning Team for assistance.