New to Canvas LMS

Over the summer 30 or so fairly tech-savvy folks from our district were invited to take a look a several LMS for possible adoption. We were teachers, administrators and tech folks. We unanimously selected Canvas as our new learning management system (LMS). Early Fall we were given sandbox access and encouraged to explore. Unfortunately I could not find the time with 3 preps, a part-time job and family life (sound familiar?). I finally made the time at the end of January, just in time to start 2nd semester. I sat through some 3-4 hours of good tutorials:

   

So I jumped-in feet-first.

I made my landing page the syllabus containing my contact information, course calendar and upcoming assignments:

I added the HTML for several custom buttons at the bottom of the page, for instance "Daily Summary", which is a diary of our daily activities and the assigned HW. It is a Google Document which is embedded into Canvas using iFrame HTML. The advantage of doing it this way is that I can easily add or modify content through my laptop, tablet, Chromebook or iPhone using Google Drive. Canvas is then automatically updated as the Document is embedded:






Content is organized into Modules:

Here is an example of a webcam lecture I made (using ScreenCastify) and posted:

Here is an example of a Google Slide lecture I made (using ScreenCastify) and posted:

Here is a typical vocabulary practice quiz I made for each section of vocabulary we study:

While I do not profess to be a Canvas expert, I think I have become fairly proficient over the past few weeks. Feel free to share everything you have learned as well. Math colleague Erika Richards was instrumental teaching me how to create and use Canvas "Pages"; we can all contribute something.