I don't know if it is the fact that Instructure hands out SWAG like no one else or if it's just the culture of sharing that comes with an open LMS, but the people at this conference are all so willing to share resources and ideas. I learned something new in every session, and constantly made new connections with other educators, Ed Techs, designers, and Instructure team members. This culture of sharing and openness is one of the keys (I think) to the success of this conference and teachers/institutions using Canvas.
InstructureCon is made up of a full day of workshop-style (1-1/2 hour – 2 hour long) pre-conference sessions, then two full days of short sessions (about 30 minutes long.) Here's an overview of the sessions I attended with additional resources from each session so that you can learn a little more on your own.
Pre-Conference Session #1: Educating Through Collaborating
• LTIs: Apps like Piazza and Prulu and be used for collaborative question and answer sessions.
• Pages: Allow students to create and edit pages in your course (it was recommend that you create all of your pages first, then turn this feature on. Students will only be able to create and edit new pages. The biggest limitation is that there can only be one editor on a page at a time.)
• Groups: Once you create a group, students have a group home page where they can post announcements, host discussions, share files, etc. Groups can be created for lab activities or other collaborative projects. If you allow students to self-sign up for a group, you can restrict groups to individual sections/class periods. A new feature that no one has really seen yet is the ability to assign or have students select a group leader. I am very interested in learning more about this feature. A key point to remember is that as a teacher, if you create an assignment and DON'T make it a group submission, once a student has submitted to that assignment, you can't change it to a group assignment so you need to make sure that you check that box from the beginning.
• Settings: In the course settings, make sure to check these boxes in the 'More Options' are when appropriate:
- Let students attach files to discussions.
- Let students create discussions.
- Let students edit or delete discussion posts.
- Let students organize their own groups.
- Teachers and students can edit Wiki Pages (when you turn this setting on, you have the option to limit students to edit/not edit previously created pages.
• Files: If you allow access to files in the course navigation menu, students can not only access files, but they can add documents to the course. This could be a great way to share documents with groups across sections or groups.
This was a great session and I learned a lot about other collaboration options when using Canvas as well as reinforced some of the ideas and methods that I have already been using. They also shared a great website, the Right Question Institute, which encourages teachers to help students ask the right questions rather than give the right answers. This is definitely a website to bookmark and check out later.
Pre-Conference Session #2: Strategies for Training Canvas Instructors
The presenter was Jordan Dayton (@jordandayton) who works for Instructure. His high-energy presentation was amazing and he shared every resource and the full content of his training with everyone (whether you attended his session or not) check it out at: j.mp/CanvasTips. Below are my notes from this session:
Pre-Conference Session #3: Getting Fit for Mobile
The best part of this session was that it was set up from the beginning, which was about a week before the conference even started, to be managed and completed from a mobile device. She also presented the entire session from her iPad so that we could see how that might work were we to attempt the same feat. This became even more important after the session ended as I completed the sample assignments that Biray set up for us to complete using some internal Canvas mobile app tools as well as using some external apps and importing the projects as assignment submissions in Canvas. Again, the whole concept from beginning to end, encompassing about a week and half of work, was very well-planned and thought out.
Below are my notes from the session: | And here is my video project using the Super Power FX App on my iPhone. |
Biray was also very kind and shared her full course as an export package so that it could be re-used and repurposed for any trainings we might hold in our district. Get the file By Clicking HERE.
Pre-Conference Session #4: MOOC Project Management
Below are my notes from this session as well as the handout that they shared with guiding questions for MOOC Project Management.
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The pre-conference sessions of InstructureCon are officially my favorite part of the entire conference. I really enjoy getting time to learn in depth and experiment with the concepts being shared. It also provided me with time to connect with other attendees and get their ideas. Again, everyone is so willing to share and connect. InstructureCon was easily the best professional development I attended all year! In my next post, I'll cover what I learned over the next two days on InstructureCon. I joined up with Michael Hakkarinen (@EdTecHakk) to present our Canvas implementation program, the Black Diamond Challenge, and I'll share all of those resources as well. | Day 1 ended with a summer snow storm (and dancing Storm Troopers because, after all, this was InstructureCon.) |