iPad + Canvas: Our Journey

Let me, Welcome you to Canvas and iPads. This is kind of our journey. It's been a interesting journey to say the least. But it I think it's made some great advancements in what we've been able to do in Warren. My name is Aaron Lundford. And I am the, from Warren township.

I'm the coordinator of Canvas in online curriculum. A little bit about us, we're located on the east side of Indianapolis, Indiana. We have about eleven thousand five hundred somewhere around the students. About eight hundred of staff. We're across fifteen schools.

We have nine elementary, three intermediate a high school, a career center, an online academy, an alternative school, adult ed. I think that's all of them in an early childhood center. Today, what we're gonna kinda look at well, first, a little bit about me This is and I can't believe I'm saying this. This is my thirtieth year in education, my thirtieth year. It was kinda couldn't believe I actually said that.

Earlier, this when we started, today is actually our first day of school. So we have students today. My teachers actually started on Monday, the twenty fourth. And then our new teachers actually started last Friday, the twenty first. The good thing is we're starting early, but we get two weeks at fall break.

So we get two weeks in October and two weeks at spring break. And then we get out the Friday before memorial day. So it's okay. I'd rather come back and sit in an air conditioned building than be outside when it's hot and he would like this. I taught twenty years in the middle school, and it was an adventure.

Loved every minute of it. I taught, seventh and eighth grade math. Mostly eighth grade. I taught pre algebra algebra and geometry. I spent five and five and a half ish years, as an e learning and information specialist at the high school across the street when they adopted Canvas.

And so I was at one building. And then I've spent this is my fifth year as the Canvas admin, in Warren township. I am a Canvas certified educator, a Canvas certified technical admin, and I facilitate both of those series of courses. Great courses. I enjoyed them a lot.

I'm also a contract trainer for Canvas. And so if you've been on the learning, the training portal, some of those webinars, I've done some of those webinars. And then I'm also an Apple certified coach. My wife, This we're we will be celebrating twenty nine years in about a week. She's a registered nurse.

My son in the middle there. Who really, as you can tell, loves having his picture taken. I caught him off guard on that one. He's a biology major, And at that point, I think that was, just a few months ago. His He's decided not to cut his hair.

So it's been about two years, and it's now down to the middle of his back. And he said, well, dad, do I need to I said, as long as it's clean, I think he was trying to get a rise out of me, but, like, hey. You have thick long hair like me, so eventually, you'll wanna cut it because it's gonna be hot. And then down there at the bottom is our eleven year old Shealty, that my wife swore up and down would be an outside dog. He now sleeps at the foot of our bed.

And has never been to a kennel. He goes on every vacation with us. We plan our, whatever hotel we're staying in, based on if they're pet friendly or not. So like I said, today, what I wanna do is kinda take you through our journey grades five through eight, adopting using, iPads. So It started in the spring of twenty twenty one.

Yes. Spring of twenty twenty one. K through four had already they already have iPads, in their building. And so they decided why move five through eight. We have intermediate schools.

So we have five through eight in the same building. So they thought, well, five and six are still part of the elementary school. So go ahead and do that. And then they also decided, then, well, we don't wanna have two different devices in the same building. So we went ahead they went ahead and did, seven and eight.

Now it wasn't an all or nothing, kind of thing. The first year, fifth and sixth grade had iPads. Last year, seventh grade had iPads This year, five through eight have iPads. So we started with fifth and sixth, fifth graders brought theirs over from the elementary, They purchased new ones for sixth grade, and then they just keep moving up. Kinder Garden get theirs new.

I believe, and then they just keep moving those up with them as they go along. Spring of twenty twenty one, teachers found out they were getting iPads. So before we went home for the summer, in every classroom, they put a TV with an Apple TV in it for every in every classroom. Every teacher then got an iPad before they went home for the summer. So they could take those with them.

Fifth and sixth grade, what we did, then was kinda just prepare them for the coming year. So what happened then in the fall of twenty twenty one, we had grades five and six with students and teachers having iPads in their classroom. So we the plan is everybody was new to it. Well, fifth and sixth grade, they had it when they were elementary, but now they're in middle school. The teachers had they had no idea.

So we were kinda starting from scratch. So for me to get them, and that's also, we adopted Canvas, the fall of twenty nineteen. So not only were they getting iPads, they were just learning Canvas as well. So they had all of these things that they were trying to navigate. So when they came back in the fall of twenty twenty one, We had fifth and sixth grade teachers and students.

We were virtual. We had alternate days. We had black and gold days. So we had some students were in person on Tuesday. The rest of them were at home virtual.

So we kinda thought, okay, how are what's what are how are we gonna do this? So it was we're gonna start small. We're gonna look at what I did was to get the to catch the teachers, I was helping them to become more efficient in e learning. So we had teachers that were as soon as I would walk into a classroom, and I saw all the copies on the tape, on the desk, I said, aren't you tired of having to walk all the way to the copy room to make copies? Well, yeah. Well, I said, well, would you like for me to show you how you can have the students, or you can upload pdfs using the iPad? Or maybe it was, I really get tired of carrying all these the papers home. I was like, well, okay.

So how about we use a, a file upload and we have the students take a picture of their work and upload it for you. That mean that way, they don't have to tear the pages out of there. Their books, but they can still you still have a copy of that. So you don't have to worry about losing the paper. You don't have to worry about not having it.

It makes it's more efficient for you. So the whole goal was for those teachers, the fifth and sixth grade teachers, was how can we make things more efficient? So they then started sharing their screens. It's like, you know what? I would really like to be able to do this during Zoom. I was like, okay. How about we take that? And we can share your iPad screen during zoom.

And you can do demonstrations during zoom. Okay. That makes sense. So let's try that. So it was a lot of going to their classroom and looking at what they what they were doing and trying to figure out okay.

How can we hook them into doing that? Once we got their attention, once they saw, oh, oh, this is gonna make things a little bit easier for me. Then they they jumped on board. So the some of the things that they were having their students do what were they were having their students take pictures of their work. They were having them, especially when they were virtual, they would have them, find something. Like, maybe they were studying shapes.

They would have them go take a picture of a certain shape that they were looking at. Or a map, or it was something that they could have them do, they could have them take a picture. They didn't have to worry about Did I give you this worksheet on Friday when you were here in person? Do you have it when you're in virtual? It was something that they could say, okay, you don't have it. It's in Canvas. Open up your iPad.

And now, you can look at it on the page. You can write you can still write it out at home. And then you can take a picture of it. And you can submit that. Or we were used yes.

What what? I think they use jam is what they use. Yes. In well, kinda. There's making some changes because we tried to use Apple classroom during when they came back in person. And from my understanding is that because we lock the students into their Apple IDs on the iPads, then that causes some issues with Apple classroom not working correctly.

So our tech department is doing we're gonna do the same thing with Jamps, because there's a JEMF teacher app, and student app that will allow us to do the same thing that Apple classroom does. And so they can then monitor, share screens. They can set up classes, however they want. I haven't gotten to that yet. They've sent me the videos, and I've kind of downloaded it on my iPad.

I just haven't had a chance to explore it. But that's something that they're gonna try for this this school year. Yes. Yep. Mhmm.

And if at the end, if you want, I can I'll give you my email, and you're welcome to send me an email, and I can send you the videos in the doc limitation that our our tech department had gave us. But for some, they said that would work a lot better. Than the Apple classroom. Yeah. And so they we haven't this is this will be what we're gonna try this this coming school year, but according to our tech, that should work a lot better.

So, but we the whole first year, because we were just kinda it was just getting started. It was okay. How can we use your iPad to make things a little bit more efficient for you, for the teacher. And so we did some We did some training for the teachers. We showed them how to do some of the the we had Apple come in and do the virtual training and show them how to to use some of the the interactivity, the numbers, the all those kind of things, but having to learn canvas and the iPad at the same time, it was just too overwhelming.

And so we just started we started slow. We got the teachers into the teacher app, and exploring the teacher app, how can you leave, how can you leave feedback for the students in SpeedGrader? How can you use the you can use the the dictation in in SpeedGrader to leave video feedback or verbals. You don't have to type all the feedback. So we spent that first year with the students and teachers just trying to make sure and to help them be more efficient just to get there, get to draw them in, just to kinda show them, okay. You know, these are things you can do with your students.

So we were using the student annotation for them to complete some worksheets. It's not the whole big creativity, but it was something that got them in and using the iPad so that they could go in, and we have our they were going in and, using the recording feature to explain their steps in a math problem. They were going in using the recording feature and recording themselves, Since they were home, they had their instruments at home. So they were using that to submit a recording unto themselves. They that was their playing test.

They would hold the iPad up. Use their instrument, they would play, and they had that as a playing test for the the, the teacher. We could they had them record themselves doing a physical activity using the file upload submission type. But again, it was just things that we could get them, get them to dip their toes into using the iPad and canvas, and how those things would benefit them. It wasn't necessarily so, that they could.

I mean, it wasn't the whole use keynote and create a presentation. It wasn't, open garage band and and and do this. Now, on my elementary teachers, they used were using garage band to practice their fluency. Because they would have the students read a passage, they would look at the the length of the the recording, then they would go back, have them read it, record it again. And they could see the change in their fluency as they were reading garage bands.

So they could see that. We had our, our EL teachers were having students going in and practicing their speaking. And so she would give them a prompt, or they would up there any new assignment. She would give them, that, something that she wanted them to read, and so they could practice reading those those passages. And because it was in the, iPad, it was easy for them to just record it.

Start over again. But it was, those things that just made things a little easier for the teachers and the students. We haven't found anything that's worked real well, but Usually, what the teachers would do is they would have them go against the wall, and so they would kinda spread out against the wall. But, yeah, that this that first year, that twenty one, twenty two, that was just getting the the students and the teachers kinda finding that hook. Well, how is this gonna make things a little bit easier on on you so that you can kinda get the students familiar with it, you're getting familiar with it.

And so then we went and we also had our, our teachers, then, grade seven and eight, they were they didn't have iPads. The teachers did, students didn't. They were still on Chromebooks that first year. So We couldn't go in and do the same kind of training with the teachers that we did with fifth and sixth grade because the students didn't have iPads. They had chromebooks.

And so our whole focus with the seventh and eighth grade teachers was, again, basically, the same thing getting them hooked on what they're doing. How can you, as a teacher, use this to make your lives a little bit easier. And so I had a teacher. I showed him how to use the the SpeedGrader to grade, and he was And he said, I mean, I don't have to click to go to each student in SpeedGrader. I can just I said, yeah.

Just swipe to go to the next the next student. And he was hooked. He hasn't taken his computer home in a year and a half now. Because he goes, I do all my grading. I leave all my feedback.

He goes, my computer stays hooked up to my monitor at school, and I only take my iPad home. So for those seventh and eighth grade teachers, we were looking at using that teacher app to help them be more efficient. In how they were helping their students. So we focused then on the iPad and being able to present. I walked into a couple classrooms, and the teacher was still up at the board trying to navigate with their computer and doing presentation.

And so I said, Hey, would you like for me to show you how to use your iPad to present so that you can be mobile in the classroom. And they were like, Oh, I can do that. I'm like, yeah. I can show you how to do that. And so I went back, and we practiced it.

And so they were able to then walk around the room pull up their assignments in Canvas or their presentation in Canvas, and they were able to go through and then walk around the room. Monitor. I said, now, you can also and this we went into the math classroom, being a former math teacher, I said, wouldn't it be nice to be able to walk around and do examples so you're not always having your back to the he was mhmm. And so we would use open up numbers. We'd open up a blank screen.

And he was able to write examples on numbers. He goes, well, how do I get my textbook? Cause we started using reveal. And he said, how can I write on the examples that's in that are in reveal so that I can do examples? I said, so we looked. There wasn't an easy way with the the, textbook company. So we figured out he figured out how he goes, if it's an example, I'm gonna take a picture, and I'm gonna use the markup tool.

And then he could save that picture and save it in any, a folder, and then he could upload that later to his Canvas page. So he would have an example worked out and marked up. So it was those things. How can you then help them help the teachers that first year be more efficient. That was what draw drew them in.

And so once we after that first year then, Our we had during that first year, we provided training. We had virtual sessions with, Apple. Some were in person, Some were through Zoom. We had extended learning opportunities. We also had one to coaching sessions.

We have instructional coaches in the building, and so they would go in, and they would provide one to one coaching sessions. And I would go in and just visit with the teachers. I because I go to every building, So I would go in and I would go to their classroom during their prep and just ask them a quick question. What are you working on? Is there anything I can help you with? And they would if they mentioned something, then I would go in and say, okay. You know you can do that with the iPad.

How. And so then that led into those conversations of showing them. We also gave them choice boards scavenge your hunts. And you guys will have access to the presentation, so you're welcome to look at those scavenger hunts. But these are things that the teachers could do.

And let me get over here and see if I can open one up. There we go. So these are things that the teachers, we would have the teachers work through. And then they could also do these with their students to learn them. So like the first one was just a welcome message.

Open the camera, take a selfie, use the markup tool to add your name and some facts about yourself in settings that you're newly taken photo as your lock screen. So they would practice it, then they could do that with their their students as well. And then we started saying, okay, what are the other things could you take pictures of and mark up? And I said, well, as a math teacher, How about if I went to Safari and I took a picture of a pyramid? And then we wrote the measure we looked up the measurements of the pyramid, put it on the image, and then we found the volume of the pyramid. Or we found a map. If you're in social studies, we found a map and you were able to mark on the map and save that.

And then you could submit that directly into Canvas. So once they had they felt comfortable with that, then they would try We had itty bitty steps of moving those things from one space to the next. Then so that was our first year. This past year Our fifth and sixth and seventh grade teachers and students had their iPads. So all of them had their iPads.

So we were still because we had new teachers coming in. So we had that mix. We were showing some teachers how to just to be more efficient, how to use the the the app, how to take those pictures. But then we started using things like the annotating the PDFs or screen recording to mark your notes, or, the Google apps and canvas, taking the quizzes using discussions and being able to record yourself and upload to discussions. So again, I mean, we had Some teachers that were way ahead of the curve, and they would jump in.

And then we had some teachers that they were still kinda hesitant of using it. And so we still had to find that hook. For example, I was with a seventh grade teacher or I think it was seventh grade. No. It was an eighth grade health teacher.

And I was helping him at the, beginning of the second semester. And he was asking me I forget how the conversation was, but he was complaining because no. It was the seventh grade. He was complaining because he was having to go in and take the worksheets from his health book retype everything in a Google doc, upload it into Canvas as a Google assignment for the kids to submit. Because it's taken me forever to type those retype those worksheets.

And I said, well, how about if we just use the camera? Scan the document, and then we put it in the Canvas. He goes, say what? And so I showed him how to take his his health book he scanned it. I walked him through the steps. We put it on Canvas as a student annotation assignment. And he said, do you mean the kids can just write right on it or type right on it? I go, mhmm.

Then they hit submit. And it's right there. And I said, and once you scan it, you can use it again next year. He goes, that's gonna save me so much time. So much time.

And so he did that. Then we were I was in a stim class, our CTE course, and they were doing, a dissection of a sheet brain, and I was walking around. And I said, Do you notice that all the kids have their phones out? She goes, yeah, I just I can't I can't get them to put their phones away. I said, You know they're taking pictures of what they're doing. She goes, they're doing what? I said, they're taking pictures.

I said, how about if you have them bring their iPads over, and instead of poking sticks into the sheet brain? How about if you take them have them take a picture of the sheet brain and then write on the the screen. And label it that way because they had to label it. And I said, and then you can have them, you can have them, record or tell you what each one of those things are before they submit them. She was, oh, that's a good idea. And so I came back.

And I we I showed her how. Take a picture on her iPad. We put it into, photos, and then we use the screen recording so that they could create a screen recording of how they explain the different parts of the brain, of the sheep's brain. And I said, because you know because one of them was actually her She got permission from the teacher. Her mom was a nurse and was wanting to see.

And so she was actually using her phone and she was so excited because she was videotaping and explaining all the different parts of the sheep's brain to her mom, who was on a FaceTime call with her. And I said, they can do that with the iPad. You can you can have them explaining things. I said, when you do your Bridge building project, have them take a picture of their their bridge and explain the different steps of the bridge. And to to draw on the picture of the bridge.

And she's like, oh, can we do that? I'm like, yes. We can do that, and I'll come back. And I'll help you with that. And so we did that. So it was they're getting slowly, but surely, they're start the teachers are starting to see the the possibilities.

And I said, once you have that, you've got that image You've got that video. Now you can upload it into Canvas, and you can grade it, and you have it as an example to save for next year. I said you can because we started just this past year, we had a, science fair. So our seventh grade science teachers, we're having students take pictures of their progress on their science fair project, and uploaded into a Canvas discussion. So they were sharing with their class their project.

They were able the teacher was then able to go into the discussion. And ask them a question about their discussion, about their project. Where is it? Where are you? You should be here. How are things going? So they were able to use that the canvas and the the iPad, the features of the iPad, to take those pictures and to submit those. So, again, we this past spring, then we started I started visiting the eighth grade teachers because they were only they still only had the iPads for demonstration and walking around the classroom.

And so I I said, remember, your fifth your your eighth grader is coming next year, they know how to do all of these things. They know they're gonna know how to do these creative things. And so we started looking at They'd already been using the teacher app. So we started looking at other apps. And I would go in, and as they're doing the lesson that they're doing now, I said, now remember, next year in class, in pages, you can have them document in pages and upload images as they're going along.

Upload upload pictures, upload videos, we started integrating their the the textbook so they could start using the textbook with their iPad. So again, we're just kinda even though this is our third year, we've had so many new teachers like in my building alone, we have, I think, fifteen or twenty new teachers this year. And so we have some teachers that are ready to move on, some that we're kinda going back, and we're in that middle ground between where we're at with the iPads. So again, we those We created an, Warren learning portal in Canvas. So in the global navigation of our Canvas instance, We have a learning portal that they can go in, and we provide training videos that they can watch five to ten minute videos.

Just like Disney plus. It's Warren plus. They can go in. Five to ten minute videos. I have a whole thing on Apple.

And they can go in and look at those videos. We also have teacher pathways. So that was something new last year. And so we create teacher pathways. They get to choose their professional development on specific days during the year.

We have school pathways, so that's their their school, professional development, teacher allocated time, and we had teacher pathways where we provide PD, and we show them, and our focus is gonna be Apple this year. So that's like those the this one up here. Where'd it go? It was kind of these. The scavenger hunt was a choice board as well. And so we're just trying to get them get them ready.

And so Our focus for this year, so our plan for this year is we're gonna move away from the how to take a picture, how to do a video. We're gonna work on more of the creative ways of using iPads and cameras is now, where in year three, all of the students are gonna be able to use have iPads now that they're gonna be able to use. And so when we design our learning portals, for example, I was just talking with the science the stem coordinator not too long ago, and she and I are, gonna do a pathway on capturing student learning with the iPad. So we're gonna look at the different ways that they can demonstrate or share their learning using the iPad, using numbers, using keynote, using, pages. So we're gonna look at the different ways she wants to create an interactive, kind of lab report that they can use in in pages, because they have to do two labs every nine weeks.

I think it's they're required this year. So she wants to come up with an interactive lab report for the students so they can they have to enter pictures. They have to enter video. They have to enter audio, all on that pages document, that they can use. So, but our our focus this year is more of the, creative how can we use those? Yes.

Yes. A lot of it is we put the the the we upload the file into Canvas as a a pages. And then they will download it into pages. I'm hoping that the the jamf that we're gonna use this year will help us be able just to send it directly to them to make it a little bit easier. Because we tried with Apple classroom last year.

And we just couldn't get all the kids connected at the same time, or, they're just wouldn't work because that's what we want. It is kinda hard to see in Canvas with the apple But if we can have them submit those in, like, in in from Jamp to the teacher so that they can see them and have them the interactive. That's one of those things that we're gonna kinda have to figure out. I don't have a good answer for that disc right now, but we're working on that. That's something we have to kinda think about as we move forward.

Yeah. They were they want to because we have, we call it the jog skills, journey of a graduate. And so we have the jog skills, which really leads toward the creativity, which is from the iPad, but because of our first two years of COVID and getting I think we really didn't have we weren't able to focus on those creativity. But now that we're back in person, we're this is our fifth year canvas, that's our as we move forward, we wanna be more creative creative with the use of the iPad in the classroom, not just take pictures and do the same thing a Chromebook can do. We want them to be more creative on what they're doing.

And because we moved away from, final exams to jog projects. And so we want them to be more creative with those jog projects, not just create a PowerPoint. And so that's kind of it's taken us a couple years to get to this point, but that's where we wanna kinda move forward with. Not with, I'm trying to think of I'm thinking I'm blanking out. Air drop.

They can't ear drop, but the they can't ear drop. Yes. They're very similar to that keyboard right there. They don't have that one has a track pad. But they have the basically, the same one with the keyboard.

No. They don't have pencils. Now I know some teachers have gone out and purchased like the little stylus that you can get for like a hundred for like ten dollars or something like that. I know they've tried to use those. Some of times they've worked, sometimes I have one of those.

Yes. Yep. I really I really like mine. And I know a couple of teachers, they've added those kind of a grant kind of found we have a foundation that provides those, and so they've added those, they've asked for those. And then I mean, that's kind of everything.

Like, but like I said, it's not we're still in that learning phase, but this is kind of where we're at with all of the things that's happened the last couple years. We're past the the how to's and the just taking pictures, and we're we're wanting to move forward to that creatively using the iPads in the classroom. Yes. Yes. We have, McGraw Hill is most of ours.

I know all of our math is reveal. I know our high school science went with McGraw Hill. Yes. Mhmm. Yes.

Well, well, the reveal, the math, I know it works. I believe they open it opens in a browser I know I have it connected to Canvas, and so everything opens within Canvas, but I believe it's a browser. Yes. Yes. The only thing they have to do is, I think there's a it asked them to link their Like yeah.

Once they do that, then they're fine. And it they haven't had any problems with using a the Google assignments. And I know, like, I have several several teachers that use it very heavily in the in the middle school. Alright. Well, like I said, there's my contact.

Feel free to email me. You have any questions, I'd be happy to answer questions, or if you have any ideas, or, and if you would like for me to send you the like, the documentation on the jamf and the videos that they created, shoot me an email, and I'll be happy to share those with That I I don't know. That was all set up by our our tech department. It's I think they're gonna send those out. If not, shoot me an email and I'll send them to you.

Alright. You're welcome. Have a good afternoon.