Summer Learning Opportunities
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June Webinars
The following webinars will be offered during the first three weeks of June. Each webinar will include a half-hour of instruction and a half-hour for questions and time to complete a task with support from Abby and Carrie, as needed. You will be added to a "June Webinar" Canvas course that will include a place for you to submit your completed task.
- You will be paid to attend the webinar and complete the task in Canvas.
- You must sign up ahead of time to attend.
- You can only attend each topic once.
- All information needed to attend the webinar, including the video stream link to each webinar's Google Meet, can be found in Sched.
See the full schedule and sign up on Sched at https://junewebinarschedule2020.sched.com/.
- Making Canvas Student Friendly: The student (and parent) experience in Canvas is very dependent upon your ability to create easy to follow and understand courses. This session will present recommendations for creating a student-friendly Canvas environment and time to put the practices into use.
- Recording, Editing, and Sharing Video: Video can be a very powerful tool in an online environment, but it takes time to create, edit, and share. This will become easier with practice and picking the right tool. This session will focus on two tools, Loom and WeVideo. Before attending the session, you must have a couple of pictures and a short recorded video saved to your computer or Google Drive. Also, contact your WeVideo admin at your home school to get a school account.
- Setting Up an Online Office Space: Learning in a virtual environment can feel very lonely for students, especially when it comes to working with their teacher. They send an email and have to wait for you to respond. This session will provide resources and options for managing your online office space, making sure students know when and where to contact you to get an immediate response.
- Best Practices for Creating an Online Curriculum in Secondary: Secondary teachers face a different set of challenges in an online environment than in the traditional face to face classroom. You have to adapt your pedagogy to reflect the autonomy that students now have in this online space. This session will focus on creating an engaging curriculum that supports student learning when they cannot be in the classroom.
- Best Practices for Engaging Students in Online Curriculum (Elementary): Elementary teachers face a different set of challenges in an online environment than in the traditional face to face classroom. You have to adapt your pedagogy to not only teaching your students but parents supporting their child at home. This session will focus on how to engage and support parents, as well as specific strategies and techniques for engaging younger students online.
- Chromebooks and Virtual Learning for K-2 Teachers: K-2 teachers have a unique situation, not only do you have to teach your curriculum online, you have to teach your student and their parent(s) how to use their new Chromebook online. This session will teach you about your student’s new Chromebooks as well as provide specific resources and techniques for engaging your student and their parent(s) online.
- Chromebook 101 (Elementary): Chromebooks operate in a completely different format than our desktops and laptops. This session will teach you all about devices as well as how to support your students in a virtual learning environment and in your classroom. We will also discuss you and your student’s school Google account and how they connect you to the applications you are using in your classes.
- Understanding Chromebooks and your Google Account (Secondary): Students have been using Chromebooks in our classes for a couple of years now, but are we getting out of them all that we could be? This session will review the basics of the devices and your Google Account as well as recommended applications useful to your curriculum both in the physical and virtual classroom.
- Best Practices for Online Assessments: Even with the best technologies out there and working with the most trusted students, we cannot guarantee that the online test you are asking the student to do is not an “open book, open note” test as they take it by themselves at home. We must get creative in building our assessments for an online learning environment. This session will offer specific examples, including reporting on essential life skills.
- Using Google Meet in Canvas: Starting next year, Google Meet will be fully integrated within Canvas. You will be able to schedule and share Google Meet with your students right from the course. No more issues with sharing the link or the link no longer working. This session will walk you through the process to better plan and support your synchronous meeting.
- Canvas Studio: Canvas Studio is a communication tool that has been newly added to WDMCS Canvas that allows instructors and students to actively collaborate through video and audio media. Studio's interface lets students and instructors engage with media content by commenting directly on the media timeline. Students can learn from each other's insights as well as from the instructor's direction and feedback. This session will review the basic usage of Studio as well as ideas for using within your course.
**As always, the instructional piece of the webinars will be recorded and shared for those that are not able to attend or if you want to refer back at a later date.**
Links to Previous Webinars
Layering Communication for Students and Families
Helping Students Read Digitally
Helping All Students Find Success
Building Relationships Online
Connecting with Your Students
Recording Video
Want to learn more?
Summer PD Options for Drake Credit or LR
The Sched sign up for WDMCS summer PD courses will be posted later this month and will be offering many online options for you including the following classes specific to Canvas and online learning:
- Integrating Canvas Into Your Classroom: You've learned the technicalities of Canvas through our PD days, now learn how to integrate Canvas into your classroom. This course will teach you how to organize your class and how Canvas can help integrate your current curriculum, utilizing all the basic features Canvas offers, as well as learning how to integrate external tools like Google.
- Integrating Canvas 2: You've learned the basics of Canvas and have been able to implement assignments, quizzes, and announcements through Canvas into your classroom. This class will focus on the more advanced features of Canvas and teach you how to move toward simple integration of your lessons to a full redefinition of lessons that make them more meaningful and effective for your students. Topics will include: using outcomes, using analytics, quiz banks, rubrics, and making Canvas visually appealing.
- Work Smarter Not Harder: Are you struggling to understand all the technology that exists in the world and in your classroom today? This course will walk you through the world of Google (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Chrome), digital citizenship, & social media. Participants will be able to "choose their own adventure" to work through the course and build on their existing skills.
- Teaching in an Online Learning Environment: (2 credits) About 33% of college students are taking at least one course online, according to a survey by the Babson Survey Research Group (2018). In Iowa (from the same survey research group), 41.8% of the enrolled student body are enrolled in at least one course online. This number continues to grow each year as more and more colleges offer online learning experiences for their students. It is important for K-12 education to prepare their students for this online learning environment. This course will focus on the tools, trends, and best practices for teaching and learning in an online learning environment. Content is appropriate for all teachers interested in learning how to teach fully online, blended, and web-enhanced courses.
Online Housekeeping Reminders
- Restart your device! Multiple updates are being sent out to your laptops and to the student Chromebooks. These help them to keep them running at their best. This is not just clam-shelling your device, fully shut down, restart, turn it off and turn it back on again.
- Clear your cache! This is especially important if you are in multiple online meetings throughout the day, the Internet is not loading, pictures aren't showing up, it's acting glitchy...follow these instructions to clear that cache.
Abby and Carrie's Office Hours (until June 1)
Weekly Monday-Friday 9:00-11:00 am, https://meet.google.com/mak-vkjd-yoi.
Carrie Jacobs
Weekly Monday-Friday 1:00-3:00 pm, https://meet.google.com/cff-bibm-aeh.
All you need to do is click on the link during the scheduled time to join the meeting room and ask us a question. You can also find the link in the signature of any recent emails we sent out. We are also available by call or text, but response time will vary depending on our meeting schedule.
Help us out and vote for Feature Suggestions!!
Please take a minute to "vote up" for these feature suggestions that WDMCS staff have found or suggested to Canvas. We have added new suggestions to the bottom of the list. Remember, you need to click "log in" at the top right for your vote to count.
Abby Cunningham
Email: cunninghama@wdmcs.org
Website: http://www.wdmcs.org
Location: 3550 Mills Civic Parkway, West Des Moines, IA, USA
Phone: (515)633-4545
Twitter: @mrs_c_ham
Carrie Jacobs
Email: jacobsc@wdmcs.org
Website: http://www.wdmcs.org
Location: 3550 Mills Civic Parkway, West Des Moines, IA, USA
Phone: (515)633-5159
Facebook: www.facebook.com/thetiedyedteacher/
Twitter: @tiedyedteacher