Canvas Roll-Out

It has been a few weeks since the beginning of the semester in our A&P courses. I rolled-out an introduction to Canvas LMS which included the following:

• how to access Canvas from a desktop or laptop
• how to access Canvas using the mobile app for phones and tablets
• where to find my contact info, daily summary of everything we did in class as well as the suggested homework, and modules
• how to navigate between modules
• how to progress through modules in a linear fashion

We used a laptop cart with one laptop per student. The roll-out was fairly smooth, with hitches mostly like the typical user name or password issues. Our course did not appear on the dashboards of several students either on the web version or the app. It was simply because the course was not favorited. Once starred, the course appeared. Homework that night was to get into Canvas, play around and start to get familiar with the module set-up.

Some students were already familiar with Canvas, as there are a handful of teachers in our building who started using it last year. I encouraged my students to get familiar with it, as our teacher websites (hosted by SchoolWires) were going to fall pretty much by the wayside. In addition, most colleges and universities use some sort of LMS like Canvas or Blackboard. About two weeks ago, I received this tweet from a former student:



All-in-all it was a fairly easy roll-out and students were quite receptive.

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.

Anatomy Scavenger Hunt

Although we do lots of Simon Says to practice learning anatomical regions, anatomy can still be a little dry. Necessary but dry.

So, after trading thoughts over the summer with Texas A&P instructor Cara Johnson (@AHSAnatomy) and tweaking @alicekeeler's classroom Twitter account idea, I came-up with the Anatomical Scavenger Hunt. Cara's students tweet Syndaver selfies (#syndaverselfie15), tagging them with the appropriate anatomical region, as well as a brief description of that region. Alice's students fill-out a Google Form with their tweet request, filling a Google Sheet. She approves the tweet and one click later it is sent-out via the classroom Twitter account.

Here is what the checklist and tweet directions look like:

Feel free to follow our escapades!

Ditch That Textbook

I finished Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller a few days ago and am only now making the time to summarize what I believe to be the most important and useful take home points for me.

I took notes as I was reading but invariably got sidetracked (you know how it goes).  As a result, there may be some points here that were not specifically mentioned in the book but, frankly, I don't see the need to parse them all out.  After all, this is not a NYT book review. Also, I have typed them up in the order I read them or in the order that I made connections from them.

• Backchannels:
• examples:

• Socrative
• Padlet
• TodaysMeet:

• goals/ideas:
• give quieter students a voice
• put up a question or prompt as students enter the room (like a Do Now; students must use their names to receive credit (?)
• use for a digital brainstorming session
• after school office hours for a moderated review session before a test - I really like this one; can use as college virtual office hours
• Flubaroo for quick grading in Google Sheets:

• free clipart:
• search.creativecommons.org:

• Openclipart:

• Paper (app) by FiftyThree for drawing and note-taking on iPads:

• WeVideo for creating and editing videos:

• ShowMe interactive whiteboard iPad app:

Miscellaneous ideas:

• Brainstorm with students first day of class and make a list of what THEY want to learn. Incorporate these ideas into our curriculum
• Post a class hashtag in classroom for students to use anytime during class on Twitter (see this post about students using their own phones to tweet using classroom Twitter account).
• Do GHOs (Google Hangout) with a high school class first, then other schools within the district, then out of district, out of state, across the globe. Why? To see what other classrooms are doing and to show what is going on in our classroom.
• Same with Periscope
• I really like this quote by Jeff Charbonneau mentioned in Ditch That Textbook. I find it to be so true:

• Here is another quote by Matt Miller that I also like: "I have become pretty good at gathering new ideas in my head without turning them into reality." Sounds a lot like me. Time to change that.
• Can't find the perfect resource? Make it!
• Another great Matt Miller quote from Ditch That Textbook: "Teachers who pay attention to students' lives and interests and incorporate them into their class give students the opportunity to see themselves in the curriculum. When they see themselves, they see the relevance." True that.

Chapters 34 (Establish Your Philosophy), 35 (Create a Mission Statement) and 36 (Identify Major Themes) cut right to the core of the matter: What do you want your students to be able to do/know/create when they walk out your door in 90 (or 180) days? What does your course boil-down to? I think that while the previous chapters contained great insight and shared fantastic tech tools, these chapters really caused me to look at what I ask my students to accomplish.

For my Anatomy and Physiology courses, I want students to get a taste of what to expect in college A&P, nursing and medical school.  I want my students to discover the connections between seemingly disconnected physiological phenomena.  I want students to start to look at patients as puzzles or mysteries, and hunt for objective and subjective clues that will lead to a differential diagnosis. I want students to begin to develop differential diagnoses, clinical impressions and treatment plans. I want students to be able to evaluate their course of action, critique it, and make adjustments. I want students to think.

I don't want this course to be merely about the memorization of anatomy (although necessary).  I want to look into other A&P classrooms K-16 and see what good things other students and teachers are doing. I also want to share what we do.

I think I need to make some adjustments before starting in seven days...

Success! Students tweeting pictures and videos on their phones via classroom Twitter account!

I was really impressed with Alice Keeler's Class Twitter concept (see her recent blog post here).  Not only the scripting (of which I understand nil), but more so the concept:  students entering tweets into a central repository (Google Sheets), to be verified/moderated by the teacher, then tweeted out via a classroom Twitter account.

Well, I teach high school anatomy and physiology. We do lots of cool things with our dissections (uncover why human patients experiencing a dissecting abdominal aortic aneurysm complain of tearing back pain, endotracheal intubations of rats and pigs, etc...). Those are worthy of sharing with other classrooms, students and friend.  Heck, why not the world? I think we'll be doing a lot of Periscoping this year (buts that's for another post).

So I wanted to alter Alice's Sheet so that 1) students could input their tweets, handles and hashtags from their phones and 2) students could input their pictures and videos as well.  The problem is that Google Forms does not handle the input of documents.  So I messed around with Formpl.us for a while, as this free program allows for the submission of documents through forms and automatically creates a Sheet for you (seems to integrate really well into Google Drive).  But I finally came across a much easier method that allows me to stay entirely within GAFE.  Here it is:

take picture or video	1. take picture or video
upload to Google Drive (on your phone)	2. open GDrive on your phone 3. hit "+" 4. click upload 5. click "photos and videos" 6. select all the photos and videos you would like to upload to your GDrive 7. select the check mark
grap URL of your picture or video from Google Drive (on your phone)	8. choose which pict or video you want to tweet and next to that pict or vid, select the "i" 9. click "get link" (copied to clipboard)
tweet-out message, handle, hashtag and picture or video	10. open the HH A&P Class Twitter Form 11. enter the desired parameters (tweet, handle, hastag) 12. enter URL of your pict or video from clipboard (ctrl-v) 13. click "submit" 14. follow @HHAandP to see your tweet!

take a picture or video on your phone

open Google Drive on your phone, and click the "+" to upload picts to your drive

click "Upload"

select "Photos and Videos"

find your pictures and video on your camera roll;
select all the ones to download and click the check mark

click the "i" next to the picture or video you want to tweet

click "get link" to obtain the Google Drive URL

the URL is automatically copied to the clipboard

Now, students open the Class Tweet Google Form (via posted QR code or Favorited URL)

students type in their tweet (no "@" and no "#" allowed),
handle and hashtag (both optional)

paste in the URL to students' picture or video and click "submit"

want to tweet again? click "submit another response"

students tweet information populates Response Sheet 

teacher drags-down scripts from previous tweet; stripped-down handle and hashtags appear,
click "Click Here to Tweet" link

teacher verifies that tweet, handle, hashtag (custom classroom hashtag automatically added to every outgoing tweet)

and picture or video appears as desired then clicks..."Tweet"

this is what the tweet looks like

here is the picture.  shows-up in feed as a picture in some OS; otherwise as a link

Done!  Students can now use their phones to compost tweets, add their own handles and hashtags and pictures and videos.  All sent-out via the classroom Twitter account and all OK'd/moderated by the teacher.

I am new to blogging, GAFE and generally don't have a clue about scripting but if you want me to help set you up, drop me a line!

Class Twitter Account (Building upon Alice Keeler)

This week Alice Keeler blogged about setting-up a class Twitter account.  Rather than having students tweet using their personal accounts, she created a Twitter account and linked-up a scripted Google Sheet into which students input their tweet, handle and hashtag. The teacher can then approve the tweet and send it out. Automatically!  If you don't follow @alicekeeler on Twitter yet, stop what you are doing and do it now.  No, really.  Do. It. Now.  Her tips on using GAFE and Google Classroom are indispensable.

So I made a Google Form (the URL of which I would post in our classroom, or QR code) so that students can enter their tweet and handle from their own devices and then allow the teacher to send-out the tweet via the class account after approval:

blank form

form filled-out

what automatically appears in Response Sheet

drag-down the script (that Alice made)

here's the tweet pending approval

there's the tweet (at the top)

The next step is to allow students to upload pictures and videos from their phones into the form, have that media automatically imported into the response sheet and get the script to include the media in the tweet.  I am looking into formpl.us and will report back...