Speaker 1: In this video tutorial, we're going to look at Canvas and how we can use Canvas modules to start building a course. If you're not familiar with Canvas, what it is is it's an LMS, a learning management system. So it's a way for teachers to manage their class and to provide content for their students and even for parents. You can put assignments on here, discussions, quizzes, things like that. And students can also turn in their work using the LMS, Canvas in this case. So let's say you'd like to build a course in Canvas. There's a couple of different ways you can do this. But in this tutorial, I want to focus on using modules to create a course. And I think it really is the best way to do it. So upon signing into my account, this is what I got. It said, welcome to Canvas. I don't have any courses. I'm just going to go over here to the right where it says start a new course. That seems like a good place to begin. So I'll go in and I'll type in the name of my course. Let's say this is going to be Spanish 2 course. So I'll just type Spanish 2. Next, I get to decide the content of this course. Is it going to be private, copyrighted material? Or do I want it to be completely public domain? Anyone can copy it. Anyone can use it. Or would I like it to be Creative Commons licensed? And there's lots of different options here that you can choose from for Creative Commons. So for this one, I think I'll just leave it private. Next, there's an option to make the course publicly visible. So how is this different from private, public? How is this different? Well, basically, what we did here in the content license, this is basically reserving the rights to the course. I'm reserving the rights to this course to me or to my school or district. But this is different. This checkbox determines whether other people, outside people, will have to log in in order to see the content of my course. If I want somebody just to be able to click a link or enter a URL and see my course and the content in my course, then I would check this box. But notice, student data will be protected. It will remain private. If you do this, though, it makes it kind of difficult, I think maybe even impossible, to do discussions and things like that. In most cases in a school, you probably don't want your course to be publicly visible. So you'll probably leave that unchecked. Then I'm going to click Create Course. And it's working to build my course. But this is a completely empty course. OK, so it's time for me to start building. And a lot of teachers like to just go in and start building assignments, start building discussions and pages. And then they kind of stitch it all together after the fact. But I don't think that's the best way to build a course in Canvas. For me, I think the best way is just by clicking this button and building modules. Now, before I click this, notice that there is a button below it, Add Existing Content. If you've taught a course in Canvas before, let's say last year or last semester, last quarter, or even if you taught something in Blackboard or another LMS, you might be able to just click here where it says Add Existing Content. And you might be able to import from those other LMSs. You can see Blackboard is here. You can also copy a past Canvas course that you made or that you taught. I could type in the course name, and it would look to see where that is and if it's importable. But in this case, no, that's not what I want to do. I want to build a course from scratch. So I'll click Create a New Module. It asks me for the module name. And at this point, I really need to tell you what a module is. Basically, I like to think of a module as being like a unit of study. So whether those units are connected to a textbook or not, it doesn't matter. So this could be Unit 1, or it could be Chapter 1, or whatever you're going to study first with the students. So I'll call this Unit 1, The Family. Let's say that the first thing that we study in this class is family vocabulary and some grammar related to that. I type it in. I click Add Module. And that easily, that quickly, I've got Module 1. While I'm at it, I think I'll add Module 2. And I'll call this Unit Number 2, The Home, Add Module. And then might as well make Module Number 3 as well. And this is going to be The Neighborhood. All right, this is going great. My curriculum is getting set up very quickly. And it looks beautiful. No, I'm teasing, of course. These are all just completely empty shells, really. There's nothing inside them. But that's OK. This is just step 1. Now that I've got these shells, or I like to think of them almost as folders, I've got three folders. These are completely empty folders, but I've got three folders. Now that I've got those, I can start to put things into those folders. So what is the first thing that I want my students to see in Unit 1? Well, it could be an assignment, first thing, or it could be a discussion. It could be almost any of the things that you see here at the left. Page, discussion, assignment. It could be a quiz. In my case, I would like the first thing that they see to be a page. So I'm going to click here on the plus sign for Unit 1. I click on that. And it says, OK, you want to add something. What? What is it that you want to add? And it's guessing I want to add an assignment. But no, that's not true. I want to add a content page. So I'll click that. It lists all the content pages that I've made in the past, which are none. So there's nothing to choose from. I'll just click New Page. I can now name this new page that doesn't really exist yet. And I'm going to call this Welcome to La Familia, Welcome to the Family. That's kind of some Spanglish for the students there. Might throw them off a little bit there. But that's all right. I'm going to click now on Add Item. And I have a page. So this empty folder is empty no longer. It's got an empty page inside the empty folder. Now, underneath that, why not have an assignment? In this unit number 1, there's going to be at least one assignment, probably more. So I click on Assignment there in the dropdown. There are no existing assignments. So I'll click New Assignment. I'll give it a name. And it'll be Describe Your Family. I click Add Item. So now, unit 1, this folder, has two items in it. And of course, I could continue. I could add a discussion in there. And I could add other things, a quiz, or whatever I want to add into this module 1, which is unit 1 on the family. But what I want to do next, as I'm sure you're noticing, this is all nice. But it's all just organization at this point. There is nothing of real value here yet, other than the names are kind of valuable. But there's no real content there. So let's start putting some content in. I'm going to click here, where it says, Welcome to La Familia. It opens up to my blank page. And I can now click Edit. And this is where, now suddenly, I can start adding some real content to this page. So I could type in a welcome message. Welcome to unit 1. You're going to love learning about the family in Spanish. So I could, of course, go on to type all sorts of text-based instructions, information for the students. I can really do some nice typing here, so that the students can read this text. And this will help them to prepare to learn the family vocabulary. In addition to text, I can go in and add some pictures. And you'll notice that there is a little icon here that says Embed Image. If you click on that, you can pull in an image from a URL, if you know a URL. You can also pull in an image from inside of Canvas. If you've uploaded images in the past into your files, you could bring those images in. So that's a nice feature. But in many cases, you're not going to be able to do that. You're not going to have the URL that you need. You're not going to have a pre-existing image that you need. So instead of clicking that Image button, I would recommend that you go over here and click on Images here in the upper right. When you click on it, it lets you upload a new image. So I can click Choose File. And it brings up some images that I could use. And I select one. And then there's one more step. I have to click Upload. And it will upload that image into my Images area here in the upper right. I think of this as being a locker, just like a locker back in the day when I attended high school, oh, maybe five or six years ago. The locker is a place where you store all the things that you'll need. And that's what this panel is at the right. I can store links there. I can store files there. And there is a special category there for images. And so I'm going to store a bunch of images in there. In addition to adding it to my locker here at the right, it also added it to the page that I'm building. Wherever my cursor was, that's where it put the image. So it's a good idea to pay attention to where your cursor is when you click Upload to upload your photos. I could click and drag to move that photo somewhere else if I want to. I can also resize it by grabbing the corner. So there's some things that you can do to adjust the image that you're given. You can also search Flickr. So I could type in family here. Maybe I'll find something that resembles my family a little bit better than the Abominable Snowman. Yeah, that's a little better. So now that I've got that image from Flickr, it's from the Creative Commons section of Flickr. So it is shareable. I can adjust that image as well and move it where I want it to be, although it is a little difficult. OK, so basically, I'm just building a page here. And I can click Save. And let's pretend that that is exactly what I want my students to see. I can now go back to Modules. Now, how do I get back to Modules? The way I got here to the Welcome to La Familia page, I got there from my Modules. So how do I get back? Well, here at the left, I have some buttons. And Canvas is kind of funny. There's lots and lots of menus that we have to deal with here. But typically, there's at least two. We've got a menu here at the left, Account, Dashboard, Courses. And in another video, I'd like to show you what some of those things do. And then we've got another menu here. Now, this menu is for the course that we're currently in. And if you want just your account options, this is where you go here to the far left. And so this is your Accounts. And this is your Current Course. So in my current course, I would like to go to the Modules. There it is. I click on it. Now, it's grayed out. A lot of times, people see that. And they're concerned that it won't work. In Canvas, being grayed out doesn't necessarily mean it won't work. So click on it, and you'll get back into the Modules area. So I have Module 1 with a beautiful name and with a page that actually has some content. So this is going well. So next, I could go in, click on Describe Your Family. And this will take me to the completely blank assignment that I created earlier. And now I can edit that assignment. And this is that same editor that we saw before for the pages. I can put in text. I can put in images. If I want to use that same Abominable Snowman image, it's still there in my locker. It doesn't make sense to use it here, though. And then underneath this area where I can type text or put in pictures or links, notice that there are some additional options, because this is an assignment. It's not just a page. There's some options there. And I plan to make another video in the future that shows you the options for assignments and for discussions. So watch for that video in the future. But for now, I'm just going to say, you can develop your assignment here, along with due dates and the number of points available and all of that, and then just click Save. But notice that there is an option for Save and Publish. That actually saves a step. But for now, I'll just click Save. So it saves. Now I'm going to go back to my modules. And there I have my list of modules. And so at this point, I think it is a good idea to publish. Let's say that this assignment and this page are exactly what I want the students to see. I want them to be able to see them. So I go over here, and I click Publish. And by publishing the module, it publishes all of Unit 1, the entire module, everything inside it. And so that's a nice little shortcut. But what if you don't want it all published? That's OK. Just unpublish certain things or publish some, leave others unpublished, whatever you want to do. But this symbol here is the Publish symbol or the Unpublish symbol. And so that's how I recommend building a course in Canvas. I recommend that you start with modules, create some empty modules, folders is how I think of them, and then start to fill up those folders with things. And the way you do that is by clicking the plus sign next to the module or unit that you want to start to put things into. And then select what it is that you would like to add. Quiz, for example. Give it a name. Add the item. And then once you've added that blank item, just click on the blank item to start developing it. Now, there is one more step that I should take. Once I have created and developed the course the way I want it to be, at least the first part of the school year, I need to also make sure that I've published the course itself. So I'm going to click here where it says Publish. It's going to publish the course, not just the individual elements of the course, but the course itself. And so now, if the students log in and they go to the home page, this is what they'll see. In a future tutorial, I'll show you how to set up a home page that looks a little nicer than this. And I'll show you some of the many options that you have for setting up a home page. Also in a future tutorial, I would like to show you how to lock and unlock modules so that, let's say at the beginning of the school year, the students don't see unit 1, 2, and 3 all at once. But they have to focus on unit 1 until they complete it or until the calendar says it's time to go to unit 2. But basically, you can hide or lock these modules until you want them to be released. So I will also show that in a future tutorial. So I hope you've enjoyed watching this tutorial and that it's been useful to you. 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