Community

With all due respect. I am a "drveloper" for the open source . I was " moderated" because , like Trump..I opined..this should have been taken careally of..whathis the date. 2016..it was then 2017 .it is NOW. 2018 AND THIS US NOT FIXED? WHAT!!!?? SUPPOSEDLy open source can be fixed quickly by ",the community of volunteers." Guess not.. But..a 'little old lady" who. "U don't know nuthin 'but no computers. " a hillbilly bohunk.. "Shared" the pic to the folder I made in modules. Stoopud hillbilly wummin! THE POLITICALLY CORRECT LINUX REPLY WAS. " OH..You have encountered a KNOWN bug.." JUST ACCOMPLISH THESE TWENTY LINES OF INSTRUCTION.. WHAT??! If you receive an auto reply it is because i have no signal or am scuba. Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE smartphone ... View more

hmmmmm jamejustsayin' ... View more

I, personally, think it is a useful thing but would also remind folks that the LOCAL college can, apparently, opt for not allowing a direct upload by a student from a phone. I, personally, as an "administrator"  find it well....easy.... to upload a image from my phone. On a Samsung S5 Android a) Click Canvas instructor b) click the Class Card c) click Discussions d) click the appropriate thread or create a thread e) click reply if addressing a pre-existing thread f) click the "paperclip" to attach g) One sees "camera" "gallery" "device" h) click gallery One sees images that can be sorted by "Time" or "album" i) click the desired image j) one sees the window to type a reply and the image below it. k) enter text l) click the "double arrow" to send IN THE REPLY there is a little paperclip, for this user, above the text of the reply and to the right. m) click the paperclip and the image appears in a separate window.  One must close it to go back to the message. james ... View more

Hi. This author was given a suggestion to post here a distillation of a comment made elsewhere about "how can I sync my Google(tm) / whatever calendar and Canvas calendar? . There are actually two parts to the comment: a) "how to do the calendar" b) whether the expended energy on the part of the Canvas time is justiied. A) It is the opinion of this author that the situation about "merging my calendar with my phone / home computer is really a situation of "the emPHAsis on the wrong SYLLAAHble" The user is almost always totally oblivious about "what has to be done" they want "to see the thing on my phone and the school computer". The developer always concentrates on "what needs to be done" but is often also has "one way of thinking" about a situation because of the words that are used in the discussion. What the user wants is:  " I want to see my tweaks of the Canvas calendar on my phone ( or at home on my home computer). What is left unstated is that "the college as a master academic calendar on my school computer and my home computer and maybe on my phone that I can VIEW.  The teacher cannot interact with it. HOWEVER, my little nook in the great universe of colleges actually provided a .csv file which we could put on our "home / phone " computer which had the school's academic calendar on it. In other words, ON A PERSONAL PHONE OR COMPUTER the user could interact with the file. This file is not "dynamic" ( that will be addressed later ). It is only tweakable by the user and viewable by the user. What is missed in the "question" "When will canvas let me put the IMPLIED Canvas ONLY that the teacher has tweaked for the student that is IN THE CLASS part of Canvas.  Again, the UNstated implication is that the teacher makes tweaks in the Canvas generic calendar and then downloads it to the local phone or computer or.... can put the Google or local calendar BACK ONTO the Canvas Class' calendar.  What is not thought about by the user is the implication that a change on one will automatically sync with the other.  Or, is at least "replaceable by new file". So, to the point of this comment. The emphasis is on the wrong syllable. B) The college already has a master calendar for the next year or two years.  The teacher cannot interact with this calendar unless the college provides it as a "feed" for maybe.....the teacher's subsite.  This was done primitively a few years ago at another college where I was participating. C) Canvas has a calendar "within the INDIVIDUAL section's part" of Canvas.  In other words, this author can place tweak section one differently from section two and I ....as the teacher, can observe both or individaully.  The student sees only the individual section. D) WE MUST NOW STEP BACK to look at this from a "nervous administrator".  The nervous administrator wants to not have some "hacker" somehow be able to "hack" the calendar... it has to be "one way". So, how can both situations be addressed? E) the two end user cases. a) the student end user now can see the tweaked calendar WITHIN the section on Canvas.  The student cannot interact with it only view it. b)  the teacher end user can tweak the generic COLLEGE calendar within each section and can download that to a local device but cannot upload tweaks back to the calendar within Canvas. c) the teacher end user who is already using a smart phone or home computer to interact with THIRD PARTY calendars such as Gmail(tm) calendar wants to be able to "interact" with the Canvas calendar but that is probably NOT ... what they "really" want. What they "really" want is to have " possibly "  the college's calendar on both the Canvas calendar and their local (Gmail(tm) ) calendar so that they have "everything in one place". So the question is how to provide what the teacher end user "think" that they want on their local device ( phone / home computer). This really is a rather simple fix in term of the idea but not necessarily the coding. F) The local Canvas person at the college acts as an interface to provide the "college calendar" as a file to the Canvas Calendar app so that: i) the teacher end user can optionally choose to include the college file in this class or that class or all classes ii) the teacher end user has it willy nilly. G) the teacher can then tweak the provided calendar from the college within Canvas.  H) the Canvas calendar can then be downloaded to the teacher's local device as an .ical or as a .csv. This is not the same as "syncing" and it does not need to so be. "syncing" implies that the calendar NEEDS to be synced daily or whatever. The college's calendar is fixed YEARS down the road. Now, yes, the college may change a few things around such as "celebrating" something in a particular week such as a "home game celebration". The actual end user teacher will probably SELDOM actually "tweak" a section's canvas calendar on a local device or through a calendar app on a home computer BACK UP to the Canvas calendar. What the teacher end user will almost always do is tweak the calendar WITHIN  the canvas section's INTERFACE. What is being advocated is .... ......that the teacher end user who actually uses and end device can download a tweaked version of the college's calendar and then has all things on one device... H) So, the answer then falls out as a simple idea. i) the Canvas interface places, or works with the IT people, to place into "Canvas" as a generic UPLOAD by the Canvas interface....the college calendar into the particular section. or) ii)The Canvas interface places the college's calendar into ALL canvas calendars which cannot be tweaked in the local section except manually by the end user teacher. iii) The teacher end user can then tweak the local section calendar which may or may not have the college's calendar on it so that the end user student merely observes the calendar. iv) the teacher end user can be provided with TWO options to download the PREVIOUSLY tweaked calendar as a .ical or .csv file onto their local machine or smart phone. THE UNINTENDED consequence of this for the teacher enduser who has the now tweaked college / canvas / canvas local section / tweaked calendar ON THEIR LOCAL smart phone or computer is that the downloaded calendar is then static. The situation is NOT BAD.... If it is stated ON THE DOWNLOAD PAGE..... that the teacher will have to DELETE the PRESENT calendar which is on the teacher end user device.... and then REload the newly tweaked calendar then.... everything falls out like Golden Apples from the Sun. I ) The worried administrator does not have a concern because nothing is "uploaded" from a hacker or a novice teacher end user. II) the student sees .....maybe.....once every few days.....the tweaked calendar in the Canvas section and has no idea of what is going on behind the scenes. III) the teacher end user who actually has "cross platform" enabled "some kind of college calendar thing" and "home use calendar" has the ....admittedly.....ONE WAY method of.... not "syncing" up and down in a minute to minute situation .... but then.... what does the teacher actually DO? The teacher usually tweaks a calendar once and then done... So.....the teacher end user has....on the phone......."the college calendar"...."the tweaked section calendar which is HOLDING the college calendar and their "home calendar".. One way to think of it is the Venn Diagram as opposed to "syncing" or "merging". The outer circle of the Venn Diagram is the college's master calendar which may or may not be included in the local section's calendar. The next inner circle is the tweaked section's calendar. The innermost circle is the teacher end user's device with can have: the college master calendar, the local section's calendar, the home / whatever / Gmail(tm) calendar. The idea is very simple. The code, however, may not be so straightforward. b) it is suggested that to determine if this is actually DESIRED that: i) the local populace of Canvas users be polled, which is really "preaching to the choir". ii) the college interface person(s) poll the actual college instructors as to whether this is actually needed. The Canvas team can then consider such data. just a few thoughts, of little worth. james P.S.  Ummmm the original suggestion was that I provide a CONCISE..... post....ummm that didn't happen! ... View more

This is a fine idea but..... It would require some extra kind of "drop down menu" and it would require that the, when invoked, the "database search function" would have to go through - user clicks main drop down menu - user clicks function "a" - Then "function a"  says to him or herself... ( think the admins in the tall hats in Tron) "I will now go out into the database while "pulling a string to find the "end of search string" other user ( the student) and come back to here, grab another string and repeat to come back here with another "end of search string (student) ) , grab another string and repeat by going out and coming back (this is how a "relational" database works as opposed to a "flat file" database works ) . Ok so I ( the old guy in the tall hat) now have all the strings to the other end of string users, what does my user want?  Oh yeah, run down the staircase looking at the different messages ( text $ )  from my user ( which had to be figured out ahead of time by the programmers and approved by the various stakeholders) grab the message and run back to the top of the stairs, Or go over to the anteroom and grab the text $ ( message ) that my user threw down the message chute and come back here. Then....send his text $ to the end of string user  ( student ) so run down each string with the message $ to each of the end of string users and come back, then, REDO all of this to verify that it has, indeed, been done or. GOSUB to a message to the main administrator ( the old man in TRON with the REALLY TALL hat) that something went wrong.  If nothing went wrong, scurry back and take a message $ to my user that this has all been done. I don't know but it might possibly be that there is a much easier thing to do for both the programmers and the "user" the teachers. a) We presently have the function in the formal spreadsheet / gradebook to "slider" exams / whatever. b) Let us suppose that the teacher is watching one exam and one quiz. c) the teacher can ust "grab and slide" the "thing"  to the left so that one can easily see the thing(s) and the name of the students. c) The teacher can then easily see "who has done what". I will now make a small suggestion, of little worth. It would be a LOT EASIER to program a function "at the top of the student name column" an option which is similar to what is in Blackboard. > e-mail selected students< And, since the teacher can actually view who has done what then.... The teacher simply selects the students who have not done something, or conversely have done something, and then ticks > e-mail selected students" and types in the message. It would be a lot more "extensible" for the teacher to type in a particular message for a particular situation ---- or to copy and paste a pre-designed message "--- and click send than to fiddle with a possible drop down message. And it would also be easier than searching through students out in the cells of the gradebook. ANOTHER VERSION OF THIS would be to have a function in which the teacher "right clicks" a student and has the option to e-mail the student. Either of these would then "call" back to the e-mail module. Clicking > e-mail selected students< would be going at it from the left side, as it were, and right clicking would be going at it from the right side, however, right clicking requires the addition of a popup information bubble and an extra function call. But, either would probably be easier than a "what if" type function. Of course each and every person reading this has her, or his, "vision" about what the "message students who... " means. And, of course, what I just posted is what I, personally, think of for the function and is not necessarily what is under discussion and others will view what I posted in their own lens.  ( There are those who say that James is kinda myopic btw   ) So all of the above is just a comment and of little worth. james ... View more