Leadership #GOALS: crafting your Canvas Vernacular
Using Canvas can mean different things to different people. Join us in this engaging session as we explore the concept of “Canvas Agreements” and the transformative potential of establishing a standardized language specific to Canvas implementation.Our expert presenters will guide participants through a comprehensive examination of the benefits of adopting Canvas Agreements within their educational settings. By establishing a common understanding and expectations around Canvas, teachers in your district can effectively harness its full potential, while creating a supportive environment for students.Join us and be prepared to actively engage, exchange ideas, and leave with a renewed sense of confidence and practical knowledge to optimize your Canvas usage. Together, let’s empower educators and inspire students through a well-informed and cohesive Canvas experience.
When I started my job right now that I'm in, it was about eight years ago, I was basically plunked into schools that had been using Canvas for quite some time, and I didn't really have a grasp of where people were at. And so I would have some, you know, superintendents and principals have me come in and they'd be like, I'm not really sure where they're at. Just teach them like best practices. Like, just just teach them stuff when I'd be like, I said, okay. I said, well, what are your expectations? They'd say, well, I don't know. I mean, like, just come in and teach them, you know, and I'm like, okay.
So I kind of designed this because I I think we had a lot of teachers who thought that they might have known quite a few things about Canvas, and they thought, oh, I already know everything I need to know. And so I thought this is a really great way just to show them as an exempl non exemplar really quick way that maybe there are things and there's room for me to grow a little bit. And so that's kind of why I started to do this. And then since then, I've actually been using it with leaders because I think it's a really great conversation to have is, okay, this how okay. First of all, Did you find any differences between these two courses? Right.
Yeah. Right. Okay. So here's a really quick question. If you were let's just say for example, that you were registered or you were enrolled in, this course right here.
What would what are some words that would describe your feelings about that? What? On your own? Okay. What's another one? UNC. Okay. What else? Not structured. Not structured.
Shirt. Yeah. This would give my children my girls anxiety. Like, they would be stressed. They would be like, it would be terrible.
It would be like, mom, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I I I don't I am not to call my teacher. I'm not really sure. And I'd be like, okay, breathe a minute.
Right? Now, my twenty year old son would look at this and he would be like, Sweet. There's nothing to do. I'm gonna go fishing. Like, he would literally look at this and say, there there's nothing to do, mom. Like, I understand what do you mean my assignment was like, there is literally nothing to do.
Right? Now, if you look at the second example, and you take a look at one, what are some words that you would use to describe this example? Organized. Yeah? What? Clear. Clear. Expectations are clear, structured. Right? Yeah.
It's welcoming. Right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And so what I started doing with leaders is I was like, okay.
My question is, do you think kids are actually in a school building every day? And they go from history and have one experience and walk across the hall to the algebra class and have a completely different experience in Canvas. Nancers? Yeah. All the time. It happens all the time. So we are in the pandemic.
It is, right when it started. My girls are freshmen in high school, and my son is a senior, which was totally awesome graduating during the pandemic. But anyway, we were there and my basement basement is where I put my office. And so I'm there for a reason. It's away from the the kitchen, and it's away from the laundry room.
Right? So I'm like in the bottom. And all sudden I hear all of this fighting up above me, and I'm like, what is going on? Like, obviously, we've been in the house for a long time at this point, right? Like something is happening. And I walk stairs of my daughters, I walked up, I said, what's going on? I said, it's canvas. I'm like, well, that's fun. Like, what about canvas exactly is causing you so much angst that you feel need to be having this argument that I can hear you downstairs.
And they said, well, we can't figure out what to do with our info tech assignment. I said, okay. So me see what's going on. So I took a look, you know, whatever. And I I consider myself to be pretty close to an expert, and I could not figure it out.
I was like, I have no idea what you're supposed to be doing. And I was super frustrated. And I'm an adult, right? And so I said, my husband's on the school board. I said, don't do it because I knew they weren't grading it. And I had to get back to work.
But I said just don't do it, and they looked at me like, ugh. So what did they do? They went to the inbox, they messaged their teacher, which I totally appreciate. But that wasn't the important part. Was walking away from that conversation, and my daughter Shay said, she goes, I just wish everybody did it like missus Nelson does it. And so for me, that was a pivotal moment.
I was like, okay. So what does missus Nelson do? And we started having this conversation, and my daughter literally started mentioning good course design. Like, everything that she said was what consisted of a really well built canvas course. And I said, I wish the principal could hear my kids say this in the middle of, you know, it was already stressful. Right? But, for my fourteen year old daughter to say, I just wish everybody did it like missus Nelson.
And so then I said, well, what does missus Nelson do? Well, she builds in modules, and she uses due dates. And on her homepage, she lets us know what's going on that week. And I was like, oh, right? Like those three really, really big things in Canvas. So let's talk about your list really quick. Okay.
We're just gonna kinda popcorn this. So somebody's gonna give me one thing and then we're gonna kinda keep a list, and we're gonna kinda keep going. But somebody tell me what's one thing that you noticed? Teacher info. Teacher info. Perfect.
Okay. What's another one? Heador. Yeah. Heador? And all of those things could have been found on the homepage. Right? So, technically, we could call this homepage.
K. What else? Recent sales. Yeah. Recent announcements are scrolling across the top, by the way. Like, one of my very favorite, like, obviously, there's a lot of things that have changed Canvas in the last ten years, but I love that one.
Right under more options, let's say four point bond. I know it's ridiculous, right? Very good. Okay. So scrolling announcements, what else? Oh, the people list? Oh, I don't even know what that is, but I wanna know, and you're Charlie Brown, that's so fun. Okay.
What's another one? Yes. That's usually the last one people come up with, and you're exactly right is consistent naming convention. Probably one of the things I hit the most when I'm working teachers. Yeah. What else? Cool.
Okay. Yeah. Image images. Yep. It's on your tile.
Yep. Excellent. What else? You were navigating for me. Yay. Navigation is to just it, isn't it? Okay.
What else? One, awesome one, they had this well, here's this option. I know he's kinda posing and, like, you know, I guess, as I mentioned to you, and it says by standards or a good point. Well, one says one step or one step is pricing up quiz options. Yeah. So there was quiz options.
Why are there quiz options on the hand side, anybody? Cause there's no modules, right? So in one A, and I had teachers that use this a lot. They have a lot of teachers that weren't building modules. And so when we do that, we have to leave the quizzes and the pages and the assignments and the discussions available to kids, right? But how do they know where to start? So we're giving them all those options, but they don't even know where to go. So I that kind of leads into course one B is built in modules. Right? So that's that's another one.
Yes. Here in the front. So let's say a individual versus collaborative. So one course is much more focused on what is the individual, feeding and participation and and it uses competency tools, collaborations. Okay.
So yeah. So there's additional tools. Maybe I don't know how many it's hard to tell. Well, additional tools, but not sure. Okay.
Anybody else? I love it that you think that was the intention. Modules make good use of hierarchy. Yeah. So using indention and using all the module tools within within the modules. Excellent.
What else? Anything else you guys noticed? Okay. So, yep, immersive reader was turned on for the pages and assignments. Excellent. Excellent. Okay.
Link. So what we noticed is, you know, obviously there were a ton of differences. Right? These are the differences that make a really huge difference for kids. So when we talk about consistent naming convention, that only doesn't just touch kids, but that touches teachers. One of my I tell this story all the time, but I started working at this school, and I had this friend named Joan, and I tell her stories.
Someday's gonna get back to her. She's like, Oh my god. I can't believe you said that. It's okay. Started working with her.
She'd been using Canvas for a couple years, and she's like, I hate Canvas. And I was like, well, why do you hate it? Sat next to her. And she's like, I can never find anything. And I said, oh, I was I said, okay. So we sat down and we started looking.
And, I opened up her files, and there were over six hundred images named SC RN, followed by a bunch of numbers, and what does that mean? She screenshotted and screenshotted and screenshotted, and she was a biology teacher. So she loves her pictures. Like, she them. And so I just told her, I said, oh, hon. I'm like, so when she would try to find an image to use on an assessment, she would be scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.
And that's why I said, okay, here's what we're gonna do. This summer, you're gonna come up with a naming convention. So all of those frog pictures that your first unit. We're gonna call those one point whatever the lesson is, and you're gonna start naming those with some sort of a convention so that you can find those. And sure enough that summer, she did that and she came back and she's like, it is so much easier.
Right? But if you don't tell teachers about good naming convention when they start, they're in year two or three, and they're like, I can't find anything. And not only just for the teachers, but also for the kids. Right? We want it to be a sense for kids, we want to be consistent. So all of those things are really important. Now the reason I came up with this list is it's really easy to come up with what good course design looks like.
You guys pretty much hit it all in the head, right? All the things that you noticed about those two things obviously one is really, really bad, and one is really, really good. Well, good. Here's the difference, or here's the thing that people don't realize. They're exactly the same. It's exactly the same content.
Like, if you were to go in and actually look at the pieces, it is the same. The only thing that's different is the way that we package it. So you might have teachers doing really great work, but if we're not packaging it in a way that they are be able to get to that to the kids, then it's really all for not. So it's really important that we start to think about, okay, what does that look like, as a as a group, as a as a school, how can we make sure we have one more one B's and less one A's. Right? We wanna make sure that our kids are having a really good experience causing less anxiety.
We don't want them to be more anxious than they already are. So here's what here well, I'm just gonna give you a couple tips about when when we're working at districts. One of we always say is, if you're a new implementation, this is a perfect time. If you're not, that's okay. But I would always encourage people to establish your Canvas payments.
Some people use the word expectations, you know, some people use the work of standards, whatever you wanna call them, Chris Giles actually uses the word Canvas agreements that kind of stole it from him. But I just like it because it's more like it sounds like, Hey, we are in agreeance here. Like me as a leader, you as a teacher, we agree that these things are best for kids. So we're gonna establish our Canvas agreements. And so one of the things I like to provide for people you haven't seen it already.
I'm assuming how many of you have seen the course evaluation checklist? Okay. It is on. I put all of this on that page. So if you go back to your credentials page, all of these resources are listed here. But essentially, this course evaluation checklist, this is established by instructional design team at Canvas.
And essentially what this is is it is best practice when building in Canvas. It is the best practice when building in Canvas, and it has different levels. So when I look at this, is we have different levels here. We have a one star, which is it saying this is an essential item. Like it is essential.
Every course should have this. And if it's a two star, then we say that is it is best practice. Right? And three star means exemplary. But then they take it a a couple steps further and they said, you know what? If you have the time, There are ten foundational things, and you'll notice there in blue that are really, really important, and I want you to take a minute and just take a look. The first one, homepage.
What did you guys notice about the two courses? What did my fourteen year old daughter say? One had a homepage. One did not. Right? So homepage has brief course description, clear instructions for students, quick and easy navigation. And noticed it's crosswalked with UDL. So you a universal design for learning principles there.
That's really big in Nebraska right now. And so that's something that they say, Hey, this is an essential part of building of this. Number two, course navigation, clear and consistent unused items are hidden. Right? You guys noticed that right away. One had like five.
If you have this experience, The question is, what where do I start? Right? Whereas if it's this experience, we're like, oh, okay. Yeah. I get, like, there's spot, you know, that's easy. I can kind of figure that out. So making sure that we have that the unused items are hidden.
We also, you know, talked about some of these other things as well, contact information, key learning information. Now one thing and this is just my own my own personal, whatever, but everything that you mentioned is on list. Everything that you mentioned is on this list. The only one that I really wish was blue, that's not. And I know there's people that have reasons why it's not.
Is this content is chunked into manageable pieces by leveraging modules. And that may be because not everybody's like building content yet, so I get that. But I this is a they say it's essential, building in modules. But that we're and then naming convention, I wish this was a one star too, but There you go. So here's the deal.
We have a we have a version two. So this came out. You may or may not know version three came out this week. Has anybody seen version three as of this week? So this just came out. You'll notice on that.
I also linked it there as well. So if you wanna look course evaluation checklist for the version three. It's there as well. And here's the difference with version three. And I was kinda talking to Dion about this a little bit last night.
The difference with version three, you're gonna notice they're super, super similar. Like, the actual items, like the actual and structural design items very, very similar. But the thing that's a little bit different is when you scroll to the very bottom of version three, it has classroom interactions. So like, hey, when you're working with a learner, these are things that's like curriculum pieces. So it's talking more curricular things versus actually setting up the classroom, but the items are really, really similar.
They're kind of kind of the same kind of thing. I linked both of those in that generic template. Now, here's here's what I tell my schools. This, if you give this to a group group of teachers that are brand new to Canvas, or even teachers that have been using Canvas for a while. If you say, Hey, we're gonna do all these things.
Isn't this awesome? Look at this list. It's awesome. Isn't it? It's awesome? Look how big it is. It's awesome. We're gonna all those things.
You're gonna you're teachers that are gonna go. You said there was early retirement. Like, could I get the form for early retirement, please? I'm out. This is not happening for me. So I always tell my school district, they say, Hey, just take this list and use it as a guide.
So if you I all of these things are not possible necessarily for some of our teachers, especially if you're a newbie. Right? But make your own version and so I linked also in that doc. I linked a version that one of my school districts made, they made their own. So they took that and they made a rubric. Now, the beautiful part about this rubric is they use it when they do their classroom observations.
They do it alongside their their regular face to face classroom observations, but they picked the pieces in that document that they thought were really important and they just made their own version of it. Something that was shorter, that was less intimidating. I've I've seen schools that have used year one and a year two list so that you're not having to do everything in one year, but now we can scaffold that out a little bit, especially if you're a new teacher and you're like, wait a minute, everybody's doing this for six gotta do all of it? No. Like you're you're one, right? So you can scaffold that out a little bit. So if you're in a disc where you haven't done this yet, and you don't have that common language.
Number one, I would encourage you just to get that going. Work with a small group of teachers. Come up with what does Canvas look like for our district? What are the things that we think are important enough that we want to be consistent from algebra history to FCS classes, whatever, that are important enough that we wanna make sure every single teacher is doing in their classroom. Okay? So that's number one. Number two, communicate it, right? You wanna make sure that you communicate that to everyone in your building.
Sounds so simple, isn't it? So if you have I always when I know we're kinda running out of time, but I always tell people, if you have a faculty course, which you should, if you're a leader and you you should post it there. Right? You should post it in your faculty course. If you don't have a faculty course, but you're going to sue you can go ahead and customize your help menu. So I have schools that will customize their help menu and they'll put their campus agreements with help menu. So again, teachers don't have to go somewhere else.
We're creating that ecosystem. So they just have to go to one place. You have the ability to customize this menu. You can notice there at the very is customized, and you can just add your Canvas agreements to the very, very top. So now your teachers are working in Canvas.
They're trying to remember like, okay, what was that we were supposed to do with our homepage? And you can go to the campus agreements up there in that help menu, and it's really, really, really nice for teachers to be able to find it quick. So communicate. Then I would encourage you that gives you a really great foundation for designing a professional learning. If you know what the fifteenth are you're gonna focus on this year that you've created from that list. Now inform your PD to go around those.
And you don't have to do them all once. Right? So maybe your focus says, the first couple weeks is, hey, we're gonna log in, and we are gonna make sure that we get that homepage where it needs to be. Alright. We're gonna make sure that it's in the right and so we can create our PD around that. And then lastly, and I think people forget this.
Provide feedback. So so often, we're like, okay, go for them prosper. You're gonna be awesome. Go ahead and do that. Yeah.
Campus is awesome. Right? But we don't come back and we don't circle around to see how they're doing. Whether that's having a peer to peer sort of feed situation, or whether that's having a formal evaluation situation, whether that's, hey, we are tracking how many of you downloaded the homepage and from Canvas Commons, every maybe it's a micro thing. Everybody did it. Awesome job.
Good job. We we did the first ask. Everybody has a homepage in place and they've edited it. Great job. And so maybe it's happy feedback.
And maybe it's like, Hey, we need to work a little bit on this, but coming up with some sort of protocol how you're gonna provide feedback for your teachers is really important as well. Now we all know, like at schools, right, that communication can be really, really tough. So I just want you to keep this in mind for one second. My asthma. They said they'd fix it, but it didn't make any difference at all.
Well, sometimes doctors make mistake Anna, you're gonna have to try twice as hard to fix them. Are you using your inhaler? All the time. Go through one a week. Are you sure you're using it Do I look like an idiot? No. Why don't you show me how your inhaler works? So even though we think we might have communicated, right? We might they communicated.
We wanna make sure that we're communicating really, really well, and that we're showing them how that inhaler works. We're showing them how Canvas works. Right? But they were also coming back. We're following up and making sure that those things are happening, making sure if they need more assistance, that we do those things as well. So guess what? It is three fifty eight.
We're supposed to get done at four o'clock. I have a quick little follow-up. There you go. You can you can do whatever you need to do. Thank you for my small but mighty group.
I appreciate that. You're welcome. Yeah. Thanks.
So I kind of designed this because I I think we had a lot of teachers who thought that they might have known quite a few things about Canvas, and they thought, oh, I already know everything I need to know. And so I thought this is a really great way just to show them as an exempl non exemplar really quick way that maybe there are things and there's room for me to grow a little bit. And so that's kind of why I started to do this. And then since then, I've actually been using it with leaders because I think it's a really great conversation to have is, okay, this how okay. First of all, Did you find any differences between these two courses? Right.
Yeah. Right. Okay. So here's a really quick question. If you were let's just say for example, that you were registered or you were enrolled in, this course right here.
What would what are some words that would describe your feelings about that? What? On your own? Okay. What's another one? UNC. Okay. What else? Not structured. Not structured.
Shirt. Yeah. This would give my children my girls anxiety. Like, they would be stressed. They would be like, it would be terrible.
It would be like, mom, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I I I don't I am not to call my teacher. I'm not really sure. And I'd be like, okay, breathe a minute.
Right? Now, my twenty year old son would look at this and he would be like, Sweet. There's nothing to do. I'm gonna go fishing. Like, he would literally look at this and say, there there's nothing to do, mom. Like, I understand what do you mean my assignment was like, there is literally nothing to do.
Right? Now, if you look at the second example, and you take a look at one, what are some words that you would use to describe this example? Organized. Yeah? What? Clear. Clear. Expectations are clear, structured. Right? Yeah.
It's welcoming. Right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And so what I started doing with leaders is I was like, okay.
My question is, do you think kids are actually in a school building every day? And they go from history and have one experience and walk across the hall to the algebra class and have a completely different experience in Canvas. Nancers? Yeah. All the time. It happens all the time. So we are in the pandemic.
It is, right when it started. My girls are freshmen in high school, and my son is a senior, which was totally awesome graduating during the pandemic. But anyway, we were there and my basement basement is where I put my office. And so I'm there for a reason. It's away from the the kitchen, and it's away from the laundry room.
Right? So I'm like in the bottom. And all sudden I hear all of this fighting up above me, and I'm like, what is going on? Like, obviously, we've been in the house for a long time at this point, right? Like something is happening. And I walk stairs of my daughters, I walked up, I said, what's going on? I said, it's canvas. I'm like, well, that's fun. Like, what about canvas exactly is causing you so much angst that you feel need to be having this argument that I can hear you downstairs.
And they said, well, we can't figure out what to do with our info tech assignment. I said, okay. So me see what's going on. So I took a look, you know, whatever. And I I consider myself to be pretty close to an expert, and I could not figure it out.
I was like, I have no idea what you're supposed to be doing. And I was super frustrated. And I'm an adult, right? And so I said, my husband's on the school board. I said, don't do it because I knew they weren't grading it. And I had to get back to work.
But I said just don't do it, and they looked at me like, ugh. So what did they do? They went to the inbox, they messaged their teacher, which I totally appreciate. But that wasn't the important part. Was walking away from that conversation, and my daughter Shay said, she goes, I just wish everybody did it like missus Nelson does it. And so for me, that was a pivotal moment.
I was like, okay. So what does missus Nelson do? And we started having this conversation, and my daughter literally started mentioning good course design. Like, everything that she said was what consisted of a really well built canvas course. And I said, I wish the principal could hear my kids say this in the middle of, you know, it was already stressful. Right? But, for my fourteen year old daughter to say, I just wish everybody did it like missus Nelson.
And so then I said, well, what does missus Nelson do? Well, she builds in modules, and she uses due dates. And on her homepage, she lets us know what's going on that week. And I was like, oh, right? Like those three really, really big things in Canvas. So let's talk about your list really quick. Okay.
We're just gonna kinda popcorn this. So somebody's gonna give me one thing and then we're gonna kinda keep a list, and we're gonna kinda keep going. But somebody tell me what's one thing that you noticed? Teacher info. Teacher info. Perfect.
Okay. What's another one? Heador. Yeah. Heador? And all of those things could have been found on the homepage. Right? So, technically, we could call this homepage.
K. What else? Recent sales. Yeah. Recent announcements are scrolling across the top, by the way. Like, one of my very favorite, like, obviously, there's a lot of things that have changed Canvas in the last ten years, but I love that one.
Right under more options, let's say four point bond. I know it's ridiculous, right? Very good. Okay. So scrolling announcements, what else? Oh, the people list? Oh, I don't even know what that is, but I wanna know, and you're Charlie Brown, that's so fun. Okay.
What's another one? Yes. That's usually the last one people come up with, and you're exactly right is consistent naming convention. Probably one of the things I hit the most when I'm working teachers. Yeah. What else? Cool.
Okay. Yeah. Image images. Yep. It's on your tile.
Yep. Excellent. What else? You were navigating for me. Yay. Navigation is to just it, isn't it? Okay.
What else? One, awesome one, they had this well, here's this option. I know he's kinda posing and, like, you know, I guess, as I mentioned to you, and it says by standards or a good point. Well, one says one step or one step is pricing up quiz options. Yeah. So there was quiz options.
Why are there quiz options on the hand side, anybody? Cause there's no modules, right? So in one A, and I had teachers that use this a lot. They have a lot of teachers that weren't building modules. And so when we do that, we have to leave the quizzes and the pages and the assignments and the discussions available to kids, right? But how do they know where to start? So we're giving them all those options, but they don't even know where to go. So I that kind of leads into course one B is built in modules. Right? So that's that's another one.
Yes. Here in the front. So let's say a individual versus collaborative. So one course is much more focused on what is the individual, feeding and participation and and it uses competency tools, collaborations. Okay.
So yeah. So there's additional tools. Maybe I don't know how many it's hard to tell. Well, additional tools, but not sure. Okay.
Anybody else? I love it that you think that was the intention. Modules make good use of hierarchy. Yeah. So using indention and using all the module tools within within the modules. Excellent.
What else? Anything else you guys noticed? Okay. So, yep, immersive reader was turned on for the pages and assignments. Excellent. Excellent. Okay.
Link. So what we noticed is, you know, obviously there were a ton of differences. Right? These are the differences that make a really huge difference for kids. So when we talk about consistent naming convention, that only doesn't just touch kids, but that touches teachers. One of my I tell this story all the time, but I started working at this school, and I had this friend named Joan, and I tell her stories.
Someday's gonna get back to her. She's like, Oh my god. I can't believe you said that. It's okay. Started working with her.
She'd been using Canvas for a couple years, and she's like, I hate Canvas. And I was like, well, why do you hate it? Sat next to her. And she's like, I can never find anything. And I said, oh, I was I said, okay. So we sat down and we started looking.
And, I opened up her files, and there were over six hundred images named SC RN, followed by a bunch of numbers, and what does that mean? She screenshotted and screenshotted and screenshotted, and she was a biology teacher. So she loves her pictures. Like, she them. And so I just told her, I said, oh, hon. I'm like, so when she would try to find an image to use on an assessment, she would be scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.
And that's why I said, okay, here's what we're gonna do. This summer, you're gonna come up with a naming convention. So all of those frog pictures that your first unit. We're gonna call those one point whatever the lesson is, and you're gonna start naming those with some sort of a convention so that you can find those. And sure enough that summer, she did that and she came back and she's like, it is so much easier.
Right? But if you don't tell teachers about good naming convention when they start, they're in year two or three, and they're like, I can't find anything. And not only just for the teachers, but also for the kids. Right? We want it to be a sense for kids, we want to be consistent. So all of those things are really important. Now the reason I came up with this list is it's really easy to come up with what good course design looks like.
You guys pretty much hit it all in the head, right? All the things that you noticed about those two things obviously one is really, really bad, and one is really, really good. Well, good. Here's the difference, or here's the thing that people don't realize. They're exactly the same. It's exactly the same content.
Like, if you were to go in and actually look at the pieces, it is the same. The only thing that's different is the way that we package it. So you might have teachers doing really great work, but if we're not packaging it in a way that they are be able to get to that to the kids, then it's really all for not. So it's really important that we start to think about, okay, what does that look like, as a as a group, as a as a school, how can we make sure we have one more one B's and less one A's. Right? We wanna make sure that our kids are having a really good experience causing less anxiety.
We don't want them to be more anxious than they already are. So here's what here well, I'm just gonna give you a couple tips about when when we're working at districts. One of we always say is, if you're a new implementation, this is a perfect time. If you're not, that's okay. But I would always encourage people to establish your Canvas payments.
Some people use the word expectations, you know, some people use the work of standards, whatever you wanna call them, Chris Giles actually uses the word Canvas agreements that kind of stole it from him. But I just like it because it's more like it sounds like, Hey, we are in agreeance here. Like me as a leader, you as a teacher, we agree that these things are best for kids. So we're gonna establish our Canvas agreements. And so one of the things I like to provide for people you haven't seen it already.
I'm assuming how many of you have seen the course evaluation checklist? Okay. It is on. I put all of this on that page. So if you go back to your credentials page, all of these resources are listed here. But essentially, this course evaluation checklist, this is established by instructional design team at Canvas.
And essentially what this is is it is best practice when building in Canvas. It is the best practice when building in Canvas, and it has different levels. So when I look at this, is we have different levels here. We have a one star, which is it saying this is an essential item. Like it is essential.
Every course should have this. And if it's a two star, then we say that is it is best practice. Right? And three star means exemplary. But then they take it a a couple steps further and they said, you know what? If you have the time, There are ten foundational things, and you'll notice there in blue that are really, really important, and I want you to take a minute and just take a look. The first one, homepage.
What did you guys notice about the two courses? What did my fourteen year old daughter say? One had a homepage. One did not. Right? So homepage has brief course description, clear instructions for students, quick and easy navigation. And noticed it's crosswalked with UDL. So you a universal design for learning principles there.
That's really big in Nebraska right now. And so that's something that they say, Hey, this is an essential part of building of this. Number two, course navigation, clear and consistent unused items are hidden. Right? You guys noticed that right away. One had like five.
If you have this experience, The question is, what where do I start? Right? Whereas if it's this experience, we're like, oh, okay. Yeah. I get, like, there's spot, you know, that's easy. I can kind of figure that out. So making sure that we have that the unused items are hidden.
We also, you know, talked about some of these other things as well, contact information, key learning information. Now one thing and this is just my own my own personal, whatever, but everything that you mentioned is on list. Everything that you mentioned is on this list. The only one that I really wish was blue, that's not. And I know there's people that have reasons why it's not.
Is this content is chunked into manageable pieces by leveraging modules. And that may be because not everybody's like building content yet, so I get that. But I this is a they say it's essential, building in modules. But that we're and then naming convention, I wish this was a one star too, but There you go. So here's the deal.
We have a we have a version two. So this came out. You may or may not know version three came out this week. Has anybody seen version three as of this week? So this just came out. You'll notice on that.
I also linked it there as well. So if you wanna look course evaluation checklist for the version three. It's there as well. And here's the difference with version three. And I was kinda talking to Dion about this a little bit last night.
The difference with version three, you're gonna notice they're super, super similar. Like, the actual items, like the actual and structural design items very, very similar. But the thing that's a little bit different is when you scroll to the very bottom of version three, it has classroom interactions. So like, hey, when you're working with a learner, these are things that's like curriculum pieces. So it's talking more curricular things versus actually setting up the classroom, but the items are really, really similar.
They're kind of kind of the same kind of thing. I linked both of those in that generic template. Now, here's here's what I tell my schools. This, if you give this to a group group of teachers that are brand new to Canvas, or even teachers that have been using Canvas for a while. If you say, Hey, we're gonna do all these things.
Isn't this awesome? Look at this list. It's awesome. Isn't it? It's awesome? Look how big it is. It's awesome. We're gonna all those things.
You're gonna you're teachers that are gonna go. You said there was early retirement. Like, could I get the form for early retirement, please? I'm out. This is not happening for me. So I always tell my school district, they say, Hey, just take this list and use it as a guide.
So if you I all of these things are not possible necessarily for some of our teachers, especially if you're a newbie. Right? But make your own version and so I linked also in that doc. I linked a version that one of my school districts made, they made their own. So they took that and they made a rubric. Now, the beautiful part about this rubric is they use it when they do their classroom observations.
They do it alongside their their regular face to face classroom observations, but they picked the pieces in that document that they thought were really important and they just made their own version of it. Something that was shorter, that was less intimidating. I've I've seen schools that have used year one and a year two list so that you're not having to do everything in one year, but now we can scaffold that out a little bit, especially if you're a new teacher and you're like, wait a minute, everybody's doing this for six gotta do all of it? No. Like you're you're one, right? So you can scaffold that out a little bit. So if you're in a disc where you haven't done this yet, and you don't have that common language.
Number one, I would encourage you just to get that going. Work with a small group of teachers. Come up with what does Canvas look like for our district? What are the things that we think are important enough that we want to be consistent from algebra history to FCS classes, whatever, that are important enough that we wanna make sure every single teacher is doing in their classroom. Okay? So that's number one. Number two, communicate it, right? You wanna make sure that you communicate that to everyone in your building.
Sounds so simple, isn't it? So if you have I always when I know we're kinda running out of time, but I always tell people, if you have a faculty course, which you should, if you're a leader and you you should post it there. Right? You should post it in your faculty course. If you don't have a faculty course, but you're going to sue you can go ahead and customize your help menu. So I have schools that will customize their help menu and they'll put their campus agreements with help menu. So again, teachers don't have to go somewhere else.
We're creating that ecosystem. So they just have to go to one place. You have the ability to customize this menu. You can notice there at the very is customized, and you can just add your Canvas agreements to the very, very top. So now your teachers are working in Canvas.
They're trying to remember like, okay, what was that we were supposed to do with our homepage? And you can go to the campus agreements up there in that help menu, and it's really, really, really nice for teachers to be able to find it quick. So communicate. Then I would encourage you that gives you a really great foundation for designing a professional learning. If you know what the fifteenth are you're gonna focus on this year that you've created from that list. Now inform your PD to go around those.
And you don't have to do them all once. Right? So maybe your focus says, the first couple weeks is, hey, we're gonna log in, and we are gonna make sure that we get that homepage where it needs to be. Alright. We're gonna make sure that it's in the right and so we can create our PD around that. And then lastly, and I think people forget this.
Provide feedback. So so often, we're like, okay, go for them prosper. You're gonna be awesome. Go ahead and do that. Yeah.
Campus is awesome. Right? But we don't come back and we don't circle around to see how they're doing. Whether that's having a peer to peer sort of feed situation, or whether that's having a formal evaluation situation, whether that's, hey, we are tracking how many of you downloaded the homepage and from Canvas Commons, every maybe it's a micro thing. Everybody did it. Awesome job.
Good job. We we did the first ask. Everybody has a homepage in place and they've edited it. Great job. And so maybe it's happy feedback.
And maybe it's like, Hey, we need to work a little bit on this, but coming up with some sort of protocol how you're gonna provide feedback for your teachers is really important as well. Now we all know, like at schools, right, that communication can be really, really tough. So I just want you to keep this in mind for one second. My asthma. They said they'd fix it, but it didn't make any difference at all.
Well, sometimes doctors make mistake Anna, you're gonna have to try twice as hard to fix them. Are you using your inhaler? All the time. Go through one a week. Are you sure you're using it Do I look like an idiot? No. Why don't you show me how your inhaler works? So even though we think we might have communicated, right? We might they communicated.
We wanna make sure that we're communicating really, really well, and that we're showing them how that inhaler works. We're showing them how Canvas works. Right? But they were also coming back. We're following up and making sure that those things are happening, making sure if they need more assistance, that we do those things as well. So guess what? It is three fifty eight.
We're supposed to get done at four o'clock. I have a quick little follow-up. There you go. You can you can do whatever you need to do. Thank you for my small but mighty group.
I appreciate that. You're welcome. Yeah. Thanks.