Good Morning ESU Canvas Community!
It has been a month or so since I sent a Canvas update. Since that time two additional Canvas updates were rolled out:
Product Releases:
August 27th Detailed Release Notes & Screencast
September 17th Detailed Release Notes & Screencast
Learning Objects CampusPack
A reminder that we are not planning to renew CampusPack for the spring term.(Appears as a sidebar option in Canvas called CampusPack Tools.) This will be the last semester we license the product. There are several reasons why: The company has ceased product updates; there are better products that do the same thing for free; and usage is dropping. Instead, we plan to incorporate Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft OneNote, and enhanced Google Apps for Education to replace the collaboration features (blogs, journals, and wikis). Podcasts can be added as media elements to Canvas. Our Instructional Design team can assist faculty with migrating content from CampusPack. We encourage faculty that still use CampusPack to explore the Microsoft and Google options with our ID team.
UDOIT
We’re super excited to launch UDOIT (Universal Design Online Content Inspection Tool) – a new feature developed by the University of Central Florida for checking accessibility in your Canvas courses. You’ll find UDOIT in your course menu. Refer to this video for a brief overview of how it works: https://vimeo.com/126968075 Using UDOIT you can run an inspection of your course for accessibility concerns. UDOIT does not auto-correct PowerPoint, Word, PDF and videos, but provides links that show you how to modify those files for students with disabilities.
Online Readiness Course
Learning Technologies is currently piloting an Online Readiness Course (ORC). Dr. Anna Catterson is leading this effort, but the entire Instructional Design team is involved. A group of volunteer faculty and staff are participating in the pilot course and will provide feedback in a few weeks. The modified course will be rolled out the spring term to all faculty.
Learning Technologies Blog and Twitter Feed
If you want more information about anything you read here, check out our blog at http://emporiastate.blogspot.com/ or follow us on Twitter @esulearningtech. Our Twitter feed was recently ranked as one of the top educational Twitter feeds in the State of Kansas.
