Canvas Pre-conferences

Today was the first day of the Canvas conference, with AM and PM pre-conference sessions. The AM session was Getting Started with Canvas, which ended up being unsatisfactory in several ways. We started by learning the student view of Canvas. Unfortunately for the presenter, everyone in the room was very eager to learn how to design their own Canvas space and had little patience with learning the student view. It made the whole first part of the session rather chaotic.

The second part of the workshop, on the instructor view, was better done.  We built a simple course and had time to play with some of the tools.  But, even though I feel like an absolute beginner with Canvas, I don't feel like I learned a lot more than I already knew.  This could be because Canvas is supposed to be so incredibly easy to learn that even the little I know is a lot.  I'll know more about that by the end of the Conference.

In the afternoon, I did a pre-session on Canvas Collaboration tools. There are a lot of them.  Most are integrations of third party products like Google Docs, Scribd and Big Blue Button.  Sadly, during the workshop, most of the tools didn't work the way they were supposed to. Also, the organization of the workshop was also rather chaotic.

My takeaway message on the collaboration tools was to be very deliberate with my use of the collaboration tools and make sure I support students fully in their use.  The best piece of advice from the presenter was to give students adequate time to "play" with the tools, otherwise they would turn the first assignment into a play session and things might not turn out as hoped. So, first assign something fun using the tool and then move on to the real work.

Still, despite the chaos, I felt like it was a good day. I met some really interesting people and exchanged some great ideas.  It's been nice to talk to people at colleges that have used Canvas for a few years. We spend a lot of time amongst ourselves in Washington and it is delightful to talk to people from other places in the country.