What's on your plate?

[Bobby2]

Teachers are such busy people. We get pulled in so many different directions during the course of a school day/week/year.

Sometimes engaging already busy teachers with Canvas can be a real challenge.

Perhaps a way to encourage teachers to use Canvas could be by first looking at and acknowledging what is on their plates then looking at the different ways that Canvas can support them in dealing with some of the things that are piling up.

Here are a few examples:

Assessment/Marking 

Assessment and the Little People

What assignment types can I create in a course?

Communication

Communication in Canvas  

Curating

laurakgibbs is the Queen of curation. Check her out here in the Community.

Just one example here. Feedback Resources Padlet in Canvas

Differentiating 

Differentiation and Personalised Learning

Student well being

Smiling Mind  https://www.gonoodle.com/  

Engagement

snufer is also a great person to follow in the Community. Here are some of his ideas. 

Embedding Content in Canvas, or: How I Learned to Stop Being Bland and Make My Content Amazing

How I Learned to Stop Being Bland and Make My Content Amazing

Planning 

Solution Fluency Activity Planner  

Invigorating English 

Invigorating English – Encouraging Writing Within Canvas K-6

Time to learn new things

Horse Before the Cart. Purpose first, Canvas second.

Too many meetings!

Perhaps consider using Collaborations to set agendas, keep minutes, or conducts the meeting in. 

How do I use the Collaborations Index Page? 

or Collaborations – Changed my world!  

When pondering what’s on teachers plates and considering what can be done to support them it doesn’t have to be all about Canvas. Perhaps look at tools that improve:

Organisation

The 12 Best Pomodoro Timer Apps to Boost Your Productivity  

Mindfulness

22 Mindfulness Exercises, Techniques & Activities For Adults (+ PDF's)  

I’m sure I’ve missed a few. What ideas can you offer to help people with what is on their plates?

[laurakgibbs]

Oh, this is such perfect timing,  @Bobby2  ; I just saw something go by at Twitter that I knew I wanted to save and share here at the Community (yes, I am curating, ha ha!) ... and so I will add it in here. It's a beautiful presentation (I haven't had a chance to listen to the audio yet; am at noisy airport at the moment, but I worked through the slides) by Kelvin Thompson about MINDFUL DESIGN, and how mindful design can lead to mindful learning. All his examples and screenshots are Canvas-based: it's really nice! I pinged  @kona ‌ about this at Twitter, so I'll ping her again too.

The videos and slides are all accessible from this blog post:

Digital Teaching Seminar Series (Asbury Seminary) « Of Courses  

And here's Kelvin at Twitter... I'm trying to lure him here to the Community too!

Kelvin Thompson on Twitter

[Bobby2]

Nice work laurakgibbshat was quick!

A bit of mindfulness in a busy airport - could be helpful.

[laurakgibbs]

EXACTLY. 🙂

[Bobby2]

Any ideas to add, so that plates aren't so full laurakgibbs

[laurakgibbs]

One thing that helps... but not always easy to do... is just to LET GO, instead of trying to control things. That quest for control really takes up an enormous amount of time and mental energy and emotional space. Trust your students, trust the process.

I just read a beautiful article at Hybrid Pedagogy about trusting students, and I'm really starting to think that maybe TRUST is the assumption that underlies all my course design choices, and that over time, the more I've trusted my students, the more free we have all become from self-imposed anxieties and other negative baggage of the mind!

Here's the article. And yes, it has a cat. 🙂

Do You Trust Your Students? | Hybrid Pedagogy 

[Bobby2]

Delicious. Very wise laurakgibbs

[tameika_munday]

This is fantastic  @Bobby2 . In my short time of taking on this role I have definitely realised the concern of teachers thinking that Canvas is adding to their already huge plate and they dont want to take it on as extra work. This is a great article and I will be referring back to it regularly.