Oh Canvas!  Dear, dear Canvas!  I SO LOVE your Announcements! 

Oh, Undelete, I Love You

While I know that not everyone gets to see this side of you, I'm so glad you've opened up to me and have shown me the wonders of Canvas Studio.

Module Requirements have made waves at our institution since we fully adopted Canvas last summer. 

Oh, Link Validator tool! How do I love thee? Let me count the ways  . . . and times you've saved me from a flood of student emails about a deleted link!

I'll be honest: I love just about everything about the New Gradebook.

One of my favorite quick and easy ways to reach out to students and keep in contact with them is the "Message Students Who" option in the gradebook! 

I love the way you tell me what to do every time I log in with the To Do list on the right side of the Dashboard. 

In honor of you, our educator superheroes, the Instructure Customer Success team (CSMs, Support, Community, Training, and Partnerships) combined our individual do-gooder powers to give back and serve in our communities around the world this holiday season. Remote employees and employees from all of our offices took the initiative to find a cause they care about and spend time serving!

I’ve noticed a word pop up a lot lately in the Community.

It can be difficult to pinpoint exactly when a community coalesces but since at least 2011 people have been interacting with Instructure and helping each other with Canvas in online forums and message boards. In those early days, a few hundred people were involved. Today, that community passes a significant milestone as more than 500,000 people have created user accounts. During this fall start in the northern hemisphere, more than 25,000 people in one 24-hour period were active in the community, commenting, voting, adding content and marking each other’s comments as helpful or the correct answer.

Let's be honest, Jive (this forum the Community uses) is not a code sharing platform or documentation repository. Yet, sprinkled throughout this community there are awesome discussions, snippets of code, queries, tutorials, demos, videos, and screenshots, that even the search feature fail to bubble up when needed. And still, scattered out there on the rest of the internet (with repos on Github and GIFs on Twitter) are more contributions that are tucked away without a spotlight.

A curated list of CanvasLMS Community and Open Source contributions.

Ahhh! How is March almost over?!? I have no idea where this month has gone! So as to not let my fellow Canvas Community puzzle pieces down, here's a stab at this month's challenge.

Because I am not a person that can work alone in a silo, I seek out the power of community in all that I do. 

For me; Community means moving from a transactional state of mind to a relational state.  By this I mean moving beyond a world view where all motivation essentially falls into two categories, which are Self Interest and Caring for Others (Self vs Others).  Instead, motivation becomes 'other-ish' meaning that you realize that you can best help yourself by helping others.

We all interpret the word COMMUNITY in different ways.  We all live in some type of community...whether in a small town, in a residential community, etc.  In these types of communities, we might be in the same part of the world, but we have different interests.  For me, it's having a sense of belonging...that you feel welcome.  Community is also sharing and talking about common interests...even in smaller group settings.

I've been fortunate to belong to a few communities. Some more effective and healthy than others.

A community is a group of people whose experiences are clustered around a common theme. They can be in the same location in person or online, and each member can find a way to contribute to their shared interests.

A place where i find people with a common interest. I always seek to work with the experts. Either it is about Canvas or Dog grooming (not that i even like dogs, but if I did. You get my point..)

As I reflect on last year, I can’t help but truly think – what happened? I was attempting to reflect (like, actually reflect, reflect), and in talking with the best manager in the world,  @tdelillo , I realized – there are chunks missing from 2018. It’s all a blur; almost like I blacked out.