What is the best thing you see so far?

[amir]

Hello,

Being new to Canvas, I do not like to waste my time reinventing the wheel. I am intersted to hear from those with more experience with Canvas to help me out. I like to know about your experience with Canvas, what was the best tool you have used or installed from the available apps that were the best and now you can't live without anymore? These can be something you have done for the faculties or the students. Being part higher ed, I am more interested in those tools that created for higher ed. I am sorry if this is so generic, but my job is to look for new things that can help our faculties and students and make their life easier, so to accomplish that I thought I take advantage of your knowledge and experience.

Thank you

 @kona ‌

[Robbie_Grant]

Hello amir ,

Because your question may not necessarily have one "correct" answer, I have changed your posting from a "Question" to a "Discussion."  I hope this is okay with you.

Robbie

[Stef_retired]

So many resources to choose from, amir‌, and it's hard to know where to start! I recommend that you join the Instructional Designers‌ group if you haven't already--you can join by navigating to the group and selecting Join Group from the Actions dropdown at the upper right of the page--and while you're there, check out Course Design Resource Index (Collaboration) . I'm sure others will come by to give you their favorites!

That said, the answer to your question is to an extent dependent on the subject being taught. For example, I used to teach humanities courses, so for me, a tool that checked originality was important (check out the Plagiarism‌ group). Prioritization of such a tool might be different among math or science teachers.

One of the tools that it seems few Canvas admins can live without is the Redirect Tool from the Edu Apps Center. It is an all-around, general purpose, handy way to create a custom course link.

[rconroy]

Hi amir!

As an admin at my institution, we have several LTI's integrated which are all helpful depending on what kind of school you work for and the different degree's that they cater to. 

For us, we use a Plagiarism tool called Certified Partner - Unplag‌ and others such as  @dhulsey ‌ use Alliance Partner - Turnitin‌. Both are great tools for different reasons and there are lots of places to research them. 

We use Lynda.com for our Graphic Arts Degrees, TestOut for many of our Computer Science Courses and broadly use Certified Partner - VitalSource for our Online Books for students. 

One of the others we use is a Broadrange Evaluation LTI called Alliance Partner - EvaluationKit that helps us gauge student satisfaction with course content and instructors. 

That's just from our side of the pool! Hope this helps. 

[laurakgibbs]

Hi amir‌! I teach fully online courses, and my favorite thing about Canvas is the way that it is open to external content; as part of a faculty development event at my school this Spring, I put together some pages that provide an overview of the kinds of integration that I enjoy most:

Laura PAINTs Canvas 

I've also done some CanvasLIVE presentations about these different approaches to embedding social media and other tools in Canvas.  I'm glad to brainstorm with any of your faculty who have ideas they'd like to try out. The slidedecks and videos for the CanvasLIVEs are here:

Connected Learning with Cats: An Index – Teaching with Canvas 

[dhulsey]

As Deactivated user‌ said, I like Turnitin. It is hard to turn down saving commonly used comments, and the offline grading capabilities of the iPad are amazing. For social document annotation, check out Perusall. For interactive lessons, I like SoftChalk Cloud. There are many great tools; it all depends on what you wish to accomplish.

[awilliams]

Using a limited definition of "tool" my favorite would have to be the Public Resources tool: https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/designers/blog/2015/05/09/embedding-content-using-the-public-... 

[kona]

Wow, people have provided some great resources! My favorite, while not exactly what you are asking about, is Dropout Detective by https://community.canvaslms.com/community/answers/partnerships/aspiredu?sr=search&searchId=f56ca31c-...‌. 

[Chris_Munzo]

Aw, shucks!  <Turns red, self-consciously kicks the ground>

[amir]

thank you, this is the right place for it.