3 Things April 19, 2020 – Special Remote Edition

FIRST THING: The Prince that was Promised – Differentiating your Modules for all learners (sort of) – 

First off, there is no Silver Bullet to making Canvas work easily for all Learners at the same time. And some of these suggestions may make things harder, not easier, for you and all of your students. That said, here are two options for differentiating within Canvas that does not blow up our grade sync to PowerTeacher Pro

1. Option 1: Module duplication: As many of you probably know Canvas does allow Module duplication, but it is an inexact science. 
   1. Within any Module, click the 3 dots menu and select Duplicate. This creates a copy of your Module and the items within your Module. Please note that Duplicate is not always available (especially if you have quizzes, playposits, or other integrated apps in your Module), but we’ll get to a workaround and best practices for that in a minute.
   2. The New Module and all of its elements will be unpublished. Also note that by adding the word “Copy” to the assignments, some of them will now have a name that is longer than 30 characters. You will need to correct this for the PowerTeacher Pro sync to work moving forward. All copied assignments should show up in the categories from which they originated.
   3. Create your main Module that you will use for most learners and then create your modified Module. The correct way to manage these Modules is to assign them all to EVERYONE, and then do not grade the students for whom that Module does not apply. Unfortunately this is due to our grade sync process with PowerTeacherPro. Any assignments not assigned to EVERYONE (or ALL SECTIONS) do not sync correctly.
   4. There will be fewer exceptions in your main Module and mostly exceptions in your duplicate Module. 
   5. These blank grades are IGNORED in all category and final calculations. 
   6. Rename your copied Module so it is clear which students need to complete which assignments. 
   7. You can also Excuse the assignments if that is easier for your record keeping, but there is currently no way to bulk Excuse grades in Canvas, so that can be tedious. 
   8. QUICK TIP: type “EX” into your first student, then highlight and hit Command+C to copy it. Now hit down arrow and Command+V in rapid succession and you will populate all grades with “EX” in a very short time.
   9. Workaround for Modules with Quizzes and Playposits. OK, so you can’t duplicate a Module with a Quiz or Playposit in it (which is not super helpful). The simplest workaround is to remove the Quiz or Playposit assignment temporarily, duplicate your Module and then restore those items to their original Modules. You will then need to create a Duplicate of your quizzes and playposits for the new modules.
2. OPTION 2: Create Module completion requirements
   1. This option requires breaking up your Modules a bit, but it could work for our purposes.
   2. For this one, you would create two assignments, one standard and one modified and you would require that students must complete one of these two assignments to complete their Module.
   3. The main drawback here is that you would essentially need a Module wrapped around every differentiated assignment. Again not a perfect solution.
3. OPTION 3: Looking for some crowdsourcing here. Anybody who has a better process for meeting the needs of all of our learners, PLEASE SHARE!!!

SECOND THING: Logging Communications in DeansList for Multiple students at Once!!!

This one comes to us direct from DeansList. Many have asked, DeansList has listened!

[New] Multiple Communication Logs at Once!

Teachers and admin members can now record the same Communication Log for multiple students at once.

TIP: Use this function to mass-mark multiple students as having been called/contacted for their absence from distance learning classes!

For more information about multiple Communication Logs, view our Help Center article here.

THIRD THING: Start a Google Meet directly from Gmail

Here’s a new feature from Google that combines Gmail and Google Meet.

Start or join a Google Meet video meeting directly from Gmail

Google Meet is now available in Gmail, which means you can start and join meetings right from your inbox, making it even easier to stay connected.

Options to start or join a Google Meet video meeting now in Gmail

Enter a meeting code or nickname to join a Google Meet video meeting