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Let Flexibility Lead To Alignment

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  In my previous school district, I was the only teacher teaching a physics course with set, district-wide learning outcomes. These same outcomes were also taught in physics classrooms at the other high school in our district. But at our school, I was one of the 2 physics teachers. The other teacher taught the AP-level physics courses. So, in many ways, I had opportunities to incorporate strategies I believed were best for learners and that I found worked best for them without being seen as out of alignment with anyone in our building. My amazing friend and one of my teaching philosophy goddesses, Katie Novak, stated the following misconception about alignment: All teachers must deliver instruction in the exact same way. True alignment, she says, is about shared goals, rigor, and outcomes. Thank you, Katie! Katie has taught me to truly believe that learner variability is the rule, not the exception. I encourage you to take 10 minutes to listen to Katie Novak explain it in the ...
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InstructureCon 2016 Volume 3: Return to Camp Canvas

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I've made my way through 70 sessions that were posted on YouTube from InstructureCon 2016.  Now, I didn't watch them all in totality. Certain sessions were focused on administration of a Canvas instance and as a classroom teacher, this is something that I don't have to deal with.

There are a lot of great videos from the Con in which you can hear the stories of districts implementing and growing their implementation of Canvas. But I'd like to focus on a couple that I found extremely informative from the perspective of a classroom teacher.

Join the LTI Camp
Christy Steffen Noblesville Schools
This is a great session for people who don't know what LTI tools are or who are already using them in their Canvas course. If you haven't investigated LTI before, this will give you a great place to start. If you're an LTI guru, you're bound to find something new.




Using Canvas and Blogs for Student Publishing and Reflecting
Terence Priester Newington College
This session does a great job of framing how teachers can utilize blogs as a reflection tool in their classroom. The presenter does a great job explaining the why behind student blogging. But, he also shares a blogging course he has created in Canvas Commons for any teacher to get students started blogging.



Hacking Canvas: Making the Rubric Tool Work for you
April Lynn Millet & Stevie Rocco Pennsylvania State University
I am all about innovating my use of rubrics in Canvas. So, I loved this session. The presenters do a great job of walking through the different types of rubrics and how one can build them in Canvas. They also include best practices for rubric design. I had so many takeaways from this one. They also shared out their slideshow.




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