Adoption Consultant Update
 February travel started slowly, and ended with only one trip to Jackson Hole Middle School (JHMS) in Teton County School District #1. The teachers at JHMS are moving toward standards-based grading, starting in the 2020-21 school year. I met with each of the core PLCs during the day, as well as their team of elective teachers. By the end of the day, we developed some overall strategies that will help teachers in Jackson Hole prepare for their standards-based grading journey starting in the fall. There are more details on this in the District Spotlight Section below.
So, what do I do when I am not traveling? This month was dominated by developing Canvas usage histories for each Canvas district, looking at publishing rates within each district for both secondary and elementary, how many students have access to Canvas, and how many teachers are publishing content in Canvas. I am now working on developing datasets that show the depth of usage of the various Canvas tools to show overall engagement of these students and teachers. These data will help inform best practices for further consulting with each district. I will be reaching out to each Canvas district with this data in the coming weeks.
As always, if there are any questions about my activities, or more in-depth assistance is needed in a district, please reach out.
Canvas Best Practices - Direct Share
During the January Canvas update cycle, a new feature called Direct Share was released into the core Canvas code. This feature will help streamline the process of moving content from one course to another, as well as add the ability to share individual course components with other teachers in a district or school.
The first step in utilizing this tool is to make sure to activate the Direct Share Feature. Canvas Admins will need to go to their instance settings, and then to the Feature Options tab. Look for Direct Share feature in the Account section and make sure it is toggled to the ON position.
Once the feature is activated, teachers in Canvas courses will now be able to share content with other classes and teachers. Individual Assignments, Discussions, Classic Quizzes, and Pages can be shared with Direct Share. In order to share the content, a teacher will need to be on the Index page for the element they want to share (e.g., Assignments, Discussions, Quizzes, Pages). To share an item, select the three dots on the right side and then select either “Send To” or “Copy To:”
“Send To” will allow the user to type in the name of the teacher to send the content to. “Copy To” allows the user to choose the course to copy the content into, and even decide where in the module structure the content should be sent.
If content via Direct Share is received, a number will appear on the Account Icon at the top of the Global Navigation, and a new link called Shared Content will appear:
Under Shared Content, the user will see the name of the item, the type of item shared, who shared the item, when it was received, and a button to perform three potential actions for any item (Preview, Import, or Remove):
Enjoy the new way of both sending and receiving Canvas content. This should greatly reduce the effort it takes to share something from one teacher to another.
District Spotlight
Teton County School District #1
Teton County School District #1 and the PLCs at Jackson Hole Middle School (JHMS) are working on best practices for Standards-based grading. JHMS is planning on using standards-based grading as the official means of reporting grades starting in the fall of 2020.
To effectively start this process in Canvas, JHMS is moving toward using Outcomes. JHMS identified a number of Core Competencies that all students should be assessed on through their tenure. Each PLC was also in charge of identifying the Priority Standards to work toward. Each Core Competency and Priority Standard was entered into Canvas by one of the building admins.
Admin Pro Tip: The best practice is to add these specific Outcomes into the Sub-account containing the school, assuming the sub-account structure is broken up by school building or entity.
The Outcomes were all created using a simple scale, which gives a title for the main ratings and half points in-between:
The final piece to this for teachers as well as students and parents is that a Google Document has been created that houses the Proficiency Scales used for each of the Outcomes being assessed in Canvas. These Proficiency Scales are linked in each course using the Redirect App, creating a direct Course Navigation link. This will allow users to open up the document and obtain specifics of each Outcome, while conserving space on the screen for teachers while assessing via Rubrics in the SpeedGrader.
Updates on how the project progresses will be provided during the 2020-21 school year.
Statewide Adoption Consulting Meeting
The purpose of these meetings is to discuss the state of adoption consulting in Wyoming, and to demonstrate new Canvas features. For the 2019-20 school year, adoption consulting meetings will start at 10 a.m. on the fourth Tuesday of every month. The March meeting should already be on calendars. Email David to be added to the email invite list.
Next Meeting: 10 a.m. on March 24, 2020
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