It’s cold outside, but Canvas has some ?? updates this month that we wanted to briefly outline. The updates this month provide two new tools that you can try out in our courses started today.
Direct Share
Sharing materials between courses is tricky. You can either set up a shared, empty course that holds materials. Any teacher in that course can then import those materials into their own class. The downside is that you now have another course to manage in Canvas.
Starting today, there is an option called Direct Share. This option allows you to either copy materials between your own courses or send Assignments, Pages, Quizzes, or Discussions right to another teacher. To send materials, you can click on the three-dot menu on any of those resources and choose where to send it.
Why does this matter?
Working in PLC, you may find or come up with resources to use with all students in a given course. Prior to Direct Share being available, getting those resources was difficult. This new feature makes resource sharing in Canvas seamless for teachers, which can lead to more effective collaboration between classes.
Direct Share is already enabled for all courses. You can read more about Direct Share on the Canvas help documents.
Enhanced Content Editor
Canvas has made some major improvements to the content editor (the text editor box) that are available for you to try. This update makes the editor more streamlined and makes added tools (Google Drive, Discovery Ed, etc) more usable with search options.
The new editor will become the default during Summer 2020. You can enable and play with it now by going to Settings, clicking the Feature Options tab and enabling RCE Enhancements. If you decide you don’t like it, you can turn it off again.
You can read more about the new editor in the Canvas documentation.
Future Updates
Canvas updates come every month. Be sure to subscribe here for future posts on new options, features, and tools within Canvas.
