Canvas and Newsela

[cgurysh]

Has anyone had any experience/issues with the Canvas/Newsela integration? We have recently purchased Newsela Pro. We have found the integration problematic. There are two issues which are problematic:

1. All courses sync to Newsela which means that even unpublished and past enrollment courses are syncing. This means teachers have courses showing from the 15-16 school year in their list of classes in Newsela. There is not a way to delete them in Newsela. 
2. All courses default to 7th grade. Newsela said that I should set the grade level in Canvas, but to my knowledge there is not a way to do that. Teachers can change the grade-level in Newsela, but as soon as they log-out and then log back in through Canvas, the change is overridden. 

Newsela says they have engineers looking into the issues, but I wondered if anyone else has tried the integration and found any solutions. 

[bogardde]

 @cgurysh  - I'm reading your post with great interest, as we are in the early planning stages of setting up the Newsela integration for our middle school. Have you gotten anywhere with fixing the problems you outlined on November 1st?

[cgurysh]

Hi Deborah,

No, the problems have not been fixed yet. Newsela told me that they did not have a timeline on when the issues would be resolved. We have kept the integration in place and teachers are working around the short-comings in hopes that it pays off in the end!

[dianepbh]

Cara,

Has this integration improved over the last year? Curious what you ended up doing as a workaround or solution.

[christopher_gil]

Hi  @cgurysh ‌ We are in year 2 with Newsela Pro and Canvas. Last year we had it integrated into Canvas and it worked well. This year we are trying their new LTI. Teachers roster students in Newsela through Canavs, we have Clever turned off. A teacher has to have the course published and leave it published. 

Students access Newsela through their Canvas course. They click on a link on the left navigation.  Like you stated, the grade is not passed through, Newsela said this is because Canvas does not store grade level data. A teacher would have to manually choose the grade. 

We did have Newsela open inside Canvas last year, but we not with our new LTI it does not. I am searching for how I got it to work last year.

Love to chat with you more about the workflow. 

Chris 

[cgurysh]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the update. We actually ended our paid version of Newsela so we are no longer using the integration. Best of luck to you.

Cara

Mrs. Cara Gurysh

Media and Technology Integrator

Cyber Liaison

Office of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment

Pennridge School District

215-453-6944 ext 113070

[christopher_gil]

Hi everyone, not sure who is still asking about Newsela Canvas Integration but I wanted to share more about what we are working on.

We have Newsela opening up in Canvas, Students use SSO through Canvas, clever is turned off for both Canvas and Newsela.

Use this link to get started with LTI - Ways to Create Accounts – Newsela | Support Center  ( under Canvas tab) #newsela  #LTI

[angie_cathcart]

Hello everyone. I am also interested in Newsela LTI integration. I have gone to the support page and filled out their form twice. I have also emailed and made a request for an integration phone call. It has been 2 weeks and no one has called or replied to my emails to schedule a call. How long should this take? We have a Pro account and it would seem that we should have better service than this. <sigh> Also, it is super frustrating that there is no phone number to call. Again, for $5k a year, I should be able to call someone.

[christopher_gil]

Hi  @angie_cathcart  please feel free to contact me, our district has Newsela Pro and we have it launched inside of our Canvas window for each student and staff. 

we have a working XML file and a working Newsela LTI . 

christopher_giles@beaverton.k12.or.us

[vhuey]

I would like to contact you from time to time if that is ok. We are in year one of integrating Newsela through Canvas.