CANVAS on a snow day?

[jknowlton]

Has anyone used Canvas to hold online classes during extended school shutdowns? If so, how did you do so?

I suspect CANVAS has features for video chats and discussions in real time, but we haven't explored this, and I feel it would be extremely useful fo test this, to prepare for the next catastrophic storm or hurricane.

[Robbie_Grant]

 @jknowlton ,

i went ahead and changed this from a Question to a Discussion as it really doesn't require a correct answer.  It does however cover a really great topic that I am very interested to hear other opinions about.

Robbie

[jknowlton]

Great! Thanks for making the change. I hope we get some action on this,

since it does seem like a rich topic. We've been using Canvas for about 5

years, and I suspect that we are just scratching the surface as far as its

capabilities go.

So, let the discussion begin!

On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 10:31 AM Robbie Grant Admin <instructure@jiveon.com>

[nwilson7]

Hello  @jknowlton ‌, I have helped a few different school districts do this as "eLearning" days.  A few months ago I worked with a school to do a practice one which I thought was a really great idea.  It was a middle school and the students came to school as normal and instead of having "normal" class, everything was done via Canvas as if students were at home.  Teachers were asked to prepare lessons ahead of time so that students would have a full lesson in Canvas.  We even made the students email their teachers with questions to practice that feature as if it was a real eLearning day, the teacher would only be accessible via that means.

A few things to consider if you do role this out: what is your students' level of access to devices that can access Canvas and what is the level of access do the students have to the internet.  The first district I worked with this on has a fairly high level of poverty.  We spent a few years doing surveys to gain knowledge on all things related to access.  We had not gone to 1:1 (where every student has a device) because we were concerned about how many of those students would actually be able to get online once they got home.  We found that most families had a device capable on getting online and access to the internet but where we found issues is if there were multiple students in the same household.  Not all had enough devices for each student to be on at the same time.  Basically situations where there is a "family device".  What we did is give students a time frame to get the work done so that they had a few days to accomplish the work.

The best thing is also for teachers to somewhat have an assignment in the hole so that in the event of a catastrophic event, they are not scrambling to put a lesson together.

Happy to discuss this further with you if you would like!

-Nick

[jknowlton]

Thanks, Nick. This is helpful, especially as it identifies you as a

potential resource for the "eLearning" scenario. I really believe we should

do something along these lines, if only to highlight things we should have

thought of, and areas for improvement.

We are in the fortunate position of having all our constituents enjoying

unfettered access to the internet and a plethora of devices!

We also have administrator/teachers who are a little tech-phobic, to whom

we occasionally have to justify the complexities of Canvas compared with

Google Classroom. Dealing with this might be considered my hidden agenda,

but I also think that the day might come (again) when school is closed for

a week or more (Hurricane Sandy!).

So, thanks again for responding.

[acolvin]

During the fires in California, our campus(es) shut down, but our online classes kept going. We actually used Canvas as a way to communicate with our on ground as well as online students during the emergency.