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Upgrading My Canvas Use

As I start looking forward to the 2015-16 school year, it's time to start upgrading. The first tool I’ll be gearing up is Canvas. Canvas is the powerful learning management system created by Instructure that my district has been using for the past two school years. I am very happy with the abilities and functionality it provides. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface in what the system has to offer. The first year I used Canvas, it was part of a pilot program in the district. The district rolled it out to a number of different teachers and hosted its own version at the district level. I spent that summer learning all about it via YouTube tutorials and was ready to use some of the basic elements. That year, I used it only in one class. I set up each unit as a module, created online quizzes for problem sets, created assignments students could submit online, and also had students create ePortfolios. Last school year, Canvas was rolled out district wide. Th

Best of InstructureCon 2015: Episode I

ComicCon just wrapped up last weekend in San Diego. Millions of dollars were poured into this convention. The ultimate goal of was to promote multimedia properties and get consumers to spend their money when these properties are released and on products at the show. Yes, it is a”show”. The sessions at Comic Con are highly attended and pirated versions occasionally pop up on the internet to the chagrin of the studios, who financed those "one-and-done" presentations, and fans who attended those sessions. Little bits of media flow out to the lowly masses. My favorite is the one below. A very different type of convention occurred in Park City, Utah a month ago. InstructureCon is not a place where Hollywood celebrities go to build hype their latest film. At InstructureCon, the stars are the educators and designers who are on the cutting edge of learning management system (LMS) integration in education. The specific LMS they are discussing is Canvas .

Three Days in the Valley Part 3

The morning of the third and final day of PBL 101, I was feeling kind of thought full. I think you may know what I mean. You have absorbed so much new knowledge that you don't have the ability to take on more before some time this reflect and break it down. For those of you who have had a health course, think about how your liver handles alcohol in the blood. The liver breaks down alcohol in the bloodstream. But sometimes the liver can't keep up with the concentration in our bloodstream and this leads to the intoxicating effects of alcohol. I say this to point out that I was feeling a little overwhelmed coming in to the last day I'd be attending PBL World. The feeling quickly changed from overwhelmed to extremely engaged when I discovered that Alfred Solis was giving the keynote. Ok, in all honesty it occurred when I learned exactly who Alfred Solis was. A couple of years ago when I first tried to learn about what PBL was and how it tied to physics, I came across

Three Days in the Valley Part 2

I've been to a few conferences and conventions in my time. I've heard quite a few keynote speeches in that time. But on day 2 of PBL World, I think I finally understood the purpose of a keynote speech and speaker is. I could go on describing the keynote, but I won’t. The keynote speaker was Stephen Ritz. That’s all I'll say as preamble. Please take the time to watch the keynote and feel yourself empowered to get out of your chair and plan a project for change. Try to resist, you can’t. For more info on Stephen and his students, head to greenbronxmachine.org . So what was going through my mind during this presentation? Well, my mind drifted to possible projects. The driving question that came to my mind was “How can you cost effectively grow food in a room with no windows?” My classroom has no windows so it would be perfect. Growing plants may be a perfect project for a biology classroom, but what place does it have in a physics classroom? My co-tea