[music playing]
Speaker 1: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.
Francisco Xavier Pinedo: OK, so again, my name is Francisco Pinedo from Soledad Adult School here in Soledad, California. I am also a OTAN SME, Subject Matter Expert. And today's session is Canvas and ESL, so mainly preparing students for post secondary. So I'll explain a little bit about that, why we started doing using Canvas here in Soledad.
If you would like a copy of this presentation, you have my email down below, fpinedo@scoe.net. Then that way I could send it out to you. So I'll leave this screen up for a little bit, that way you could write down my email. And then also, I would be more than happy to share it with you.
OK so the agenda for this short hour that we have this afternoon is, I'm going to do an overview of Canvas and Canvas comments, brief intro into Canvas, which is a Learning Management System, LMS. So other ones that we have heard about are, for example, like Blackboard, like Moodle, which we use a lot in adult ed as well.
Also the why CANVAS for ESL specifically, I have heard discussions where colleagues want to use Canvas for high school equivalency. And I believe there's a session tomorrow for the high school diploma and using Canvas for that purpose, but also for high school equivalency.
Those are a little bit harder to find. So I'm going to be going over some of the ESL stuff that we found using Canvas Common. Also, how to import content into your Canvas shell, what I call your Canvas account, how to invite students. And then I will be doing a live demo. And, of course, I'm going to leave time for a Q&A.
So at any point you can go ahead and chat in a question that you have. I'll be more than happy to answer it for you. The objective for this afternoon is to inspire you to use Canvas and Canvas comments for ESL students. So our focus here at Soledad Adult School, this is year two of us using Canvas.
I want to say it's year one because the first year it was only my ESL class. This year it's my other two colleagues and myself using Canvas Common for ESL. And then we did start in person. So we were in person with students using Canvas in the classroom teaching them. And then we went back to remote. And so they were kind of-- been flip flopping me back and forth.
But Canvas has been a great way to keep the student retention. We haven't really lost a lot of the students because we took the time to onboard them into Canvas, explain to them how to use it, guide them in the classroom how to use it. I teach students how to use platforms for higher education.
So just down the street from where I am, literally like a quarter of a mile away is the new satellite campus for our community college, the Hartnell Community College. And they use Canvas. So I thought, well, we should start teaching our students to use Canvas so that that way when they go to the community college, it's one less barrier that they have to worry about to be able to be successful at the community college.
Also to teach you to select and customize content from Canvas Commons-- so we'll be talking a lot about Canvas and Canvas Common. Canvas is, think of it as your website, the site. And Canvas Common is where I pull in a lot of resources in that I'm going to share with my students.
So the first question I always like to start and ask is, well-- and I get asked is, well, what is Canvas? So people-- including myself. The first time I heard the term Canvas, I was thinking of another site that's very similar without the S. And I was thinking, ah, doing pictures, or flyers, things like that.
But, no, Canvas with an S, it's actually an LMS, a learning management system that is used by a lot of higher education institutions. And just recently in the last year or so it's starting to be used more and more in adult education, which makes me very happy.
Also our local-- here in Soledad, our high school is also using-- well, they were using Canvas last year. I don't know. I haven't really connected with them that much this year. But I do want to say that they're still using Canvas for some of their subjects.
And for the same reason, because at that campus they do also offer some community college courses in the evening before our campus was opened here just down the street. So the instructors there were sometimes doing that teaching for the community college. So they also use Canvas in there with their students.
It's a managed online course. You can create assignments, discussions. You can add modules. You can add your own. Or you can import from Canvas Common. Or you could share if someone shares with you something. It fosters students' engagement and success.
So the students are, for the most part, very well engaged. Again, I always tell them if it's a post you're going to respond to it and everybody else could see. So that's when we talk about being a good digital citizen. So all that comes into play once we start using Canvas.
And mainly for intermediate advanced ESL students, that was my suggestion. Of course my coworker, she started implementing Canvas with her beginning ESL. She has been very successful. So now I could say you could use it for any level of ESL. It really doesn't matter the if they're intermediate/advanced.
But I began using it with more-- I still teach that same group. So for me it was easier for them to be onboarding with Canvas. And then my colleague, she was very successful with her beginning pre-lit class as well.
So this is a overview of what I call the Canvas shell. So you could see that this is my site. It's fairly simple. I don't want to overwhelm the students too much. It has the basic information that they need like the class syllabus, the Zoom link, my contact information.
On the sides you can see-- oh, we have Linda says that she uses Canvas with beginning high-level English students successfully, yes. I think most of our students, if we onboard them properly and we teach them how to use it will be very successful.
My mindset changed when I started seeing that it could be used for all students at all levels, not just intermediate/advanced. But, yes, it is very successful. It just will take you some time to teach your students how to get to that point where they could do it independently.
So I have my area for announcements, assignments, discussions. Some of them I don't use as you could see, like the ones that have the little eye with the cross. That means that the student site is not going to see that. So you can also do quizzes, grades as well.
Well, and there's two versions of Canvas. There's the paid version. I'm using the free version. This is the free version. In the paid version, which I know many community colleges, have some adult schools that I've been in contact with also have a paid account, you're actually able to take attendance. So here in our community college, the instructors actually take attendance through Canvas for both in-person and for distance learning courses as well.
So this is what I like to call my Canvas shell. It's very easy to customize. I kept it very simple not too overwhelming for the students. So you're either going to click here, here, here, or here. And it's going to take you where you need to go.
Let's see here-- here you could see, for example, in the assignment, so here you would see the students. I would upload the lesson for the week. And then it would have the due date. And then the student would come into their Canvas account and they would click on whatever lesson we're working on, and they would do the work on.
So it's also teaching the students organization skills. Like, OK, I'm starting with unit 5 lesson 1, work my way down to lesson 6. Lesson 6 was kind of big, so I broke it up into different parts. So then the student knows automatically. And then they also get an email notification whenever I upload a content or when something is open in Canvas to do.
So they know exactly that on Tuesdays they're going to log in to Canvas and they're going to see this week's assignment. Of course you don't see this because this was a screenshot I took last week for this presentation.
When the student clicks on an assignment, they can do the assignment within Canvas. So I don't have to be emailing them a document and having them emailing me back. I could simply select the assignment as an annotated document. So the student would see this.
When the student will open up this right here, let's say I click, let's pretend I click right there. And it took me to this one here. So in here I'm going to be able to annotate, answer the question. You could see that there is a chat feature, which I would click on it. And then I would type in my answer right here.
Of course-- uh-oh. It will have the instructions here. Because this is from the teacher side, so you're not able to see all the things that I put. But for the students side, I'm able to put the instructions. I'm able to put-- do all that. And then when the student finishes the documents, you can see that this document is eight pages.
So that means some of it is reading. And there's reading comprehension. So I would give them a time of, let's say you have a couple of days to do it. And then they would get a notification as well. Students could highlight, as you could see here. They can also, if there's something that-- there's a lot of things that I say, OK, you're not going to do number 5, for example. So I cross it off or they cross that off as well, or if they want to underline, highlight something.
So it's very good because it eliminates a lot of the paperwork that would go into play if I was to print this out or the student was to print this out. And then at the end there's an area where it says Submit. So once it's submit, I get a notification that it is submitted.
I do have a question of, what is my opinion about using digits? 6.1 so, Maureen-- I'm hoping I'm pronouncing your name right-- is it referring to-- I'm thinking it's referring--
Audience: Yeah, how you organize the lessons step by step on the Canvas, you had lesson 6, uh-huh. Or unit 5 was, uh-huh, that.
Francisco Xavier Pinedo: I tried that. Oh, I get it. So, yeah, like 6.0, OK. This year, my students, it's a very interesting group. I tried that. And they were going in the wrong areas. So when I began doing part A, part B, they seemed to have gotten it better.
And the reason I modeled it is because when the students at-- here at the elementary school they use Seesaw and some other programs. That's how the teachers break it up, like part A, part B. So I think the parents are more familiar to see because a lot of my adult ed students also have children here in the elementary school.
And I've seen my nephew's Seesaw account, which is another learning management system. And they have it like part A, part B, part C. So I tried experimenting with that. You could see here, I still did it a little bit different. I was still experimenting. I put lesson 3.
That was a little bit successful. You could see right here I'm doing it that way. But what I'm finding it easier is that when I tell the students, OK, today, we're doing lesson 6 part A or part B right away. And I'm not getting emails like, oh, we already did this. Or I already submitted that.
So it seems to work. So, again, it might depend on your population. Again, this year I have a very interesting group where it seems that this is working for me. But it might work for you. I mean, I do like the option of 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, definitely.
Another comment, I didn't realize that there is a free version of Canvas, is that Canvas Common? I'm going to get to that point also. Oh, feedback on assignments. OK, so once I go live on the actual, my Canvas shell, you'll be able to see that. So I'm going to hold those questions a little bit more later on of how do I assign feedback because I do give a lot of feedback. There's rubrics. There's a lot.
So how does Soledad Adult School use Canvas? So we use courses that are college aligned because we are importing the courses from the Santa Ana college. That they produce in Canvas Common for Canvas. So think of Canvas Commons as maybe the site where you will-- OK, I come from the time when I had a smartboard.
And within the smartboard, there was this external site where I would go and I would pull lessons. Some of them were free. Some of them were paid. And then I imported into my Canvas account. So Canvas Commons is the repository maybe where there's a lot of lessons, units, and even whole curriculum that I import. So it's college aligned because that's what they're using for their non-credit, I believe their non-credit ESL.
It teaches them-- again, it's giving them that experience of, this is what I'm going to see in higher ed. And it's a great way for student interaction because students can interact with one each other, respectfully of course, responding to comments, responding to someone's work. Or we also, in our classes we have students do presentations.
For example, at the beginning of the semester, like maybe like mid-September, they did a presentation about themselves, about their culture. And students would comment. They would comment and they would, of course, we would tell them what is appropriate, what is not appropriate.
So we do a lot of video/audio. There's also an area where the student could record their voice and is reading a passage or something if we want to see how well they're reading. So it's a great way for student interaction and for student communication.
So Canvas Common is a free learning repository that lets educators to find, import, and share resources. So Common is available for free for all teacher accounts, whether it's paid or the free version. You can always customize the Common. You'll see, I'll show you in just a bit how a lot of the content from Santa Ana College is not relevant to students here in Soledad Adult School.
For example, when it says contact the school counselor, well, we really don't have a school-- well, we do share them with the continuation school. But we don't have all the resources that the community college has. So a lot of the information I do take out.
A lot of the work, again, because they produced it, is relevant to Santa Ana city. So a lot of it-- I'm Orange County. I'm able to customize it as well. But I always give credit to the original owner. I make sure that whatever information I'm using I always give credit, in this case to Santa Ana College because, again, it's teaching the students that it's always good to cite your sources.
What can I do with Canvas Commons? So with Canvas Commons, you can search for content relevant to your subject, mainly ESL. I mean, there is not a lot in it for adult ed. But what there is, it's mainly for ESL. Build courses-- I know my friend Jennifer, she was working on a Canvas for citizenship. I need to double check with her.
But you can build the course from the ground up. You could customize it on your own and build it. You can create, add your own lessons, add your own material that you're going to use. You would share the material with your colleagues.
Again, we want to make sure that we respect all of what we upload. Make sure we're respecting the copyrights for, if we're using x, y or z curriculum, we want to make sure that we are respecting the copyright policy for that. And people would recognize your content. So if you start seeing more and more, you're adding more and more things into Canvas, people will be able to recognize you.
This last one here, I remember I was talking to Penny Pearson a couple of months ago about this. Canvas Commons is an OER, an Open Education Resource, based on how the course is copyrighted. So I don't want to say everything in Canvas Commons is OER because that would be not true. But it's based on what the module, the lesson, the curriculum that you import, the course, how they're copyrighted.
But, again, because we do use a lot of the open education resources in Common, the one that we are using is an OER. Do you have to share? No, you don't have to share your material. I mean, you could just keep your material in your Canvas account. You don't have to share it with Commons.
So think of Commons, so I come from the K-12 background. So, for example, a site where I want to think like with Commons is the Teacher Pay Teachers. So with the Teacher Pay Teachers, they develop something, they upload it. And then somebody else downloads it for a profit. It's kind of the same, except in this way in Commons they're not charging.
But if you upload it into Commons, someone could be able to retrieve it. But if you keep it locally on your own, or maybe just share it with your colleagues, then you will keep it private. I hope that answers that question. Let me see here.
So this is an example in my Canvas. So I have, for example, for my advanced ESL-- right now I have-- it's a little bit different. This is a screenshot from, I believe, earlier last semester I believe. So you could see that here on my dashboard, I have all the different courses that I have.
Down here, you're going to see that there is a little C with an arrow that is pointing that says Commons. That's where I would click if I want to go into Canvas Commons. But, first, going back to a question is where they didn't know that Canvas had free-- there was a free account. You would click on this site here, instructor.com/register. So if I click on it-- Oh, it's not found, OK.
Speaker 2: So Francisco, I just went to-- let me put the link in. Oh, did you get? OK, you got it. I'm going to put the link in too. OK, got it.
Francisco Xavier Pinedo: OK, so here, to create your account is very simple. You would put your first name, last name, and then the type of account-- teacher. Now for the teacher one, you do have to provide a email that is attached to a educational institution.
So if I do my personal email at gmail.com, it's not going to allow me. It has to be a-- for example, I use my k12.ca.us email. And then here you fill out that information. So, again, what you could do is you create content, assignment, quizzes, discussions, video conferences as well. You can upload video lessons as well.
You would have some personalized learning, standard-based grade books. You can use the Canvas app. I have it here on my iPad. And it's actually great for-- when you are doing the feedback for the students, it's so much easier to do it on the iPad for me at least. I work a little bit different than everybody else. But at least it's easier for me doing it on the iPad than going on the computer and doing that.
It also, it integrates with third-party applications. That's mainly like, hey, we could do this, but for the paid version. So I really just do it to create content assignments, quizzes-- yeah, I do some of them-- discussions. And then the video conference, again, we use Zoom. In our district we can only use Zoom if we're teaching with students. So we don't really use that. We use we use Zoom in that.
So if you don't have a account or, many times in the community college you do have an account but you're very limited. I believe in the community college-- because I also work part time for our local community college-- I'm not able to import anything from Canvas Commons because of the way how they are set up.
But because I also work in a school district, I use my regular school district account and I'm able to do that. And then I'm able to import from Canvas Commons. Let's see what I have here. So things to consider is using an institutional Canvas account might limit what content you can import them.
So that's what I was just talking about right now. It might not be the same for all higher end institutions that use Canvas, but my experience, what I've experienced from some local community colleges is that they wouldn't even have that little function, that little C with the arrow. They won't even have that because it's so restrictive. So we know it can be a little bit restrictive sometimes.
Free accounts also have limitations on things you could do, like for example taking attendance, doing student reports, things like that, tracking, doing the charts. But then again, most of us in the Adult School, we use x, y or z attendance platform. So we really won't-- I mean, I personally don't find a need for it.
And one suggestion is that please, please, please don't tomorrow set up your free Canvas account and say, oh Francisco from Soledad told us it's free and we could do it. Check with your admin first before starting a Canvas account, yeah, OK. So make sure you ask them first.
If they don't know about Canvas, educate them a little bit about Canvas. Let them know the benefit of having a Canvas account because I have heard situations. So let's just keep it at that. So always ask.
So here in Soledad, like I said, we used a curriculum from Santa Ana college, all levels of ESL now from beginning all the way to advanced. It's aligned to community college standards because it was produced in a community college setting.
Here in Canvas Common, again, whatever I search-- and I'm just doing-- I always like doing a screenshot just in case the internet decides to act up and not let me do what I'm going to show you next. But let's say that I am looking for content. So I'm going to see here that there's a course.
A course means it's the whole everything, like the whole-- think of it as the curriculum that's from lesson-- unit 1 all the way to unit 10, all the lessons. Everything is there. You also have modules which are like units. And then you have lessons which would be like individual lessons.
Again you do have to find what material is relevant for you because-- if I type something as broad as verbs, it's very specific. But if I want, for example, past-tense verbs or whatnot, and then you could customize by grade level, because Canvas is again mainly geared for K-12.
Adult ed, for example Santa Ana, and there's a couple of other places that do add adult ed content. But most of the users in Canvas are K-12 instructors. So that's going to be that information. So for example here, if I'm doing a search on verb tenses, here I could see that it's either a quiz, an assignment, a module.
So these are small things. And then it will give you the grade. So you could customize, do the filter by grade as well. So, again, you would think of your class and see, well, you could easily see what's their grade level based on their CASA score. You can correlate that. And if everybody is on the same grade level, you could choose it for that level.
But then again, you would get that information here. If it's a quiz, it's going to tell you the author as well, and then how many times it's been downloaded, how many stars of rating it has. OK, let me just skip this one. OK, so let me go into my Canvas account and then to address some of the questions on the feedback one.
So here again, when I go to the site, even with my credentials, it's telling me, do you need a Canvas account? Click here, it's free. Let me just click there so you can see. And then this one, here's a little bit different than the link that Blair shared with us in the chat box, or this one, or the one that I showed you as well.
This one here, you would choose I'm a teacher. But then again, it's going to take you back to this one. So whether you go the route I just did right now, or the route that was from the link, it's going to end up here. So here is where you would do your-- and of course they're going to want to sell you right away the paid one.
So when I log in, so here you could see, I have the courses that I have. So this is the one that I showed earlier, which is my real one with my students. So I really didn't want to play too much with this one because last time I did and I had to redo a lot of the things.
So as a teacher, I could see here I have my to do list. So I purposely left these here so that you could see that it's going to alert me of what I need to do. So for example here, I have to do-- or I guess these students turned it in late because it's five students who submitted the work.
And while that's loading, over here on the side, and then you could see, sometimes I just put something as simple as great work. So this one was a reading activity that they did. And then they responded. You could see how the student responded. They have their answers here.
So then here I could add comments. So when they were talking about feedback and, again, I have this assignment that is just a point and a comment. You can also do rubrics as well. I mean, that's more time consuming even for me.
So I try not to do rubrics. I mean, I do tell the students what I expect. And then here I could add the comment. Let's say that the work, it was just not acceptable. I can reassign it to the student, and then it will open the link back for them.
How do you make your worksheet interactive? OK, that starts from whenever you're doing an assignment. So let's say that I'm going to do-- oh, I don't have anything saved on this computer. But when I add an assignment I would click right here.
And then-- so here I would put the name of the assignment, the instructor-- the instruction, not the instructor. It's an assignment. If it's going to be points, complete and complete, a letter grade, a percentage. And then, so this is where it's going to be. If it's going to be something that you want them to annotate online, you would do online. So see how when I have no submission, there's nothing.
When I click on Online, it's going to give me an option. Do I want text entry, website? I do this one, student annotation. And then here I'm going to select the file, the PDF, preferably saved on a PDF. So when I upload it-- let me see if I have anything on this computer. No, I don't have anything, like literally no documents on this computer.
But let's pretend I selected a PDF. And then I do Upload. So then what the student is going to see, is a student is going to see this right here. They're going to see this document here. But now they could go in and they can write in it. So the student will be able to do this.
And then, of course, there's different options. I always tell them stick with black. Don't give me one color here, one color there because-- yeah. So the original-- no, actually, that's a good question. So the curriculum that we're using, because I'm teaching a ESL course, so we are using the-- this course is from Mt. Diablo Adult School that was on-- oh, my mind blew a-- for their early childhood education course.
So it was a document, a Word doc. So then in Word I converted it into PDF. And then I uploaded it into Canvas. So you could create your own worksheet in Word, Google Docs. Just save it as a PDF. And then once it's saved as a PDF, you can import it here as a PDF.
Of course, for example this is from the curriculum from Mt. Diablo. So we always give them credit. And then also within the curriculum, I believe you saw it here somewhere, it has also credit to the original author. So we also could do media recordings. If we want students to upload a video or upload of voice recording, we can also do that.
Me, for my course that I'm teaching, it's a lot of the media, doing a small video like doing an activity with a child, and then also the student annotation. So as it saved as a PDF it will work. PDFs-- because when the student opens it-- whoops-- when the student opens it, it will be a PDF. But it will be a PDF that they could write in, OK.
So that eliminates a lot of paperwork for me in the discussions. We really haven't done a lot of discussions because it's more in the work that they do or the video. So for example here is an example. And I think I have them blocked, so that's why no one's able to see them.
So here the students would, for example here, please introduce yourself to your classmates. So then you would see how some of them respond to each other and so forth. I would add my course syllabus. For example, this is what I'm going to be teaching every week.
There's also the calendar feature, which I've taught my students how to use a calendar to be more organized. And then you would see here the area that says Commons. So for that one, let me log into the sample site that I have for this because then I'll probably do something, and then I'll my students will be emailing me like, why did you add this?
OK, so when I go into Commons, let's say I'm teaching a ESL course-- pardon our internet here in Soledad. It's a little bit slow sometimes. OK, so what I could do is I could do-- ESL, it's very broad.
So it's going to open up a lot of different options, different things. So then that's where you would look at the information. If it's a course, this one it looks interesting. It's a grammar course. It says it's all grade. So I could click on it, and then there's a preview.
So the details, look-- so I could see here the details. I could see that it was from the University of Florida. On the preview, it will show you a preview. Pretend you're seeing the preview of the course. So if I like it, I choose it. If I didn't like it-- this one here says ESL 1. It's a course as well.
So you could see on this one here there are 29 assignments, 23 pages. There is one discussion, 12 quizzes, 114 files. So for example here, it's all about me and my family. So I would click on it. You would see that there is a video example which is a YouTube video.
OK, so we watched the video. And then you would click here where it's like a Google slide. So you could see-- so I could start seeing this. And, of course, it's going to want to copy it into your Drive. So those are some of the things that may be, well, I like this, but I don't like this.
And then here you can import it or download. So you could import it into your account and use it for later. So this is what I say, like I take time to really look at what you like. So, for example-- and then-- oops, I spelled it wrong. Here we go.
Can you only-- yes, you can only import parts. So here, for example-- and that's right on time. Let me see who did the-- I'm sorry. I'm used to working with two monitors. Right now I only have one. So I can't really see everything. So Maureen says, can you import only parts, not the whole Canvas shell? Yes.
So you're going to see this one here. So this one here from Santa Ana is the whole course. So that means it's everything. Or I could just do a module. So a module, think of it as a chapter. So, for example, this one here is on health. It's for intermediate/high ESL students.
So I could choose everything or I could only choose one. So let's say I like this one, but I'm only going to choose certain parts. I could use the filter to narrow if I want only courses, if I want modules, assignments, quizzes discussions, documents, video.
So let's say that I want only courses. So I could filter courses. And then it's going to show me that from what I'm searching for, for Santa Ana college, these are the courses. So let's say I don't want courses, I want modules and not courses. So then here it's only going to show me the modules that was produced by-- in this case, I'm using Santa Ana because that's what I typed.
So then let's say that I find something that I like. Let's say I like this one here because I'm going to teach about employment. Maybe it's tied to a EL civics task, or to something that I'm doing with my regular curriculum, and I'm using this as supplemental. So then I would see the preview and everything. And then if I really like it, I would click on the import, so here you go.
And then you could see there's the introduction and then the point system and everything. I would click Import or Download. So once I click the Import or Download, because this is a module, it's going to ask me, well, where is it do I want it? Do I want it in all my courses? Do I want it in the one for my actual class? Or do I want it in for my OTAN.
So let's say I want it only for the OTAN folder. I'm not going to click on it because of time and because sometimes it does take maybe a couple of minutes to import all the information into your Canvas account. So once I click here, you're going to see a notification on your screen that says it's being imported into this course right here. Because remember, there's the ECE and there's the OTAN course in my account.
So in my account I created one. So I imported the ESL, the Beginning Low. So this is what I imported. So once I imported the whole course, this is what I'm going to see. And this is where you could really customize it, where you could edit. So I would go to Edit.
And then once you edit here-- again, I'm sorry, our internet's really-- so here I could customize. And maybe this class, maybe I don't want this banner because it might confuse students. So I could take it out. And then I would say ESL Beginning 1 and then the instructor name.
And then here I could see-- for example, you could see that there are links here that might not be relevant to my Adult School like the contact instructor. Well, we'll see that one in just a bit. But like the virtual, we don't have a Virtual Welcome Center here in Soledad, so I'll go ahead and erase that. We don't have a Support. So I'm going to erase that.
I will leave this logo right here. I will leave it because I always want to make sure that I give credit to the author. So then I save that. So now my, what I call the storefront, is going to look a little bit different. Now, remember the banner on the top, now I've removed that. I've customized it.
This is how the student is going to see it. So this is what the student will see. They'll see the home page. They'll see this. They'll see the modules. So the modules, so let's say module 1, so these are all the activities that the student is going to do in module 1.
So, let's say for example this one here where the student creates their campus profile, I want that due on Friday instead of Wednesday. So then I would go in the same. I would go in-- well, for that I need to leave the student view because then I cannot edit. And then I would go Edit.
And instead of saying it's due on Wednesday, I'm going to say it is due on Friday. And then I'll save that. So then the student is going to see that now it's due on Friday. So once you download, anything that you download from Canvas Common into your Canvas account, you can go in and you can customize it. You can customize it. You could really make it your own to fit for your students' needs as well.
For example here, the syllabus-- so here it has-- and what I like is that it has what I call the bare-bone template of, here you would insert. You could insert a PDF of your syllabus. You can here add a picture of the instructor and a short bio, if there's any material, any books that they need to purchase, the SLOs, the Student Learning Outcomes so that you could really customize it.
And then every time you do something, you would just make sure that you press Save. Here you have rubrics also that you could create. So for each assignment there is a rubric. And you can customize it. So you can add more or add less. In this case, it would be adding more.
And then here, let's say that these are things you don't want students to see. So you could click them and unclick them. So if I don't want the students to see files or something, it would be disabled. That means the student won't be able to see.
So with Commons is what I'm using to build my Canvas site, my Canvas that I'm going to share with the students. So I could go ahead. I try to keep it simple. I upload one whole course. I try not to add more because, remember, each course might be a different author. So sometimes if I'm referencing the work from Santa Ana, then I reference the work from this school, students will get a little confused sometimes.
And then also sometimes it's not going to be an easy, like a seamless transition for that. So let me see, so on this way, so now I have my Canvas set up and everything. And then I want to publish it. So now I've done all the changes I need to do. So now I want to publish it.
So then I would click right here where it would say Publish. I don't know why it's not letting me, but it will let you. You will click Publish. And then it will publish it. And once you have it published, you're going to see it. Oh, of course, it's published already, that's why.
So once it's already-- when you're still working on it, you're going to see it down here where it says Unpublished. When you're ready to go live, share it with your students, it's going to go from here to the top part where it says Published Courses. And then from there is where I would send it to the students.
So if I want my students to access my Canvas, I would go to People. And then here, so you could see these are all the students that I sent the invitation to. So then I want to add a person. So I would add the person's name. And then they're a student. They're in this class.
And then you would just click, add their name again. I don't know why this step is a little repetitive-- And then their email. Oh, wait a minute. Oh, I would put their email right here, sorry. So then I'm going to add the student's name. And then-- hopefully someone doesn't have that real email.
Once you click Add User, it's going to send the student an invitation for them to join this class. By them clicking on that link and then just confirming a few things like their name, the course, and everything, you're going to see here who accepted. So see all these students accepted.
This person here-- she's actually a coworker. So I told her to purposely leave it there. If it says pending and you hear the student, oh teacher, I couldn't log in, or I forgot, or I didn't get the information, you can go in and check. And then you could see, you could resend it again.
Or if they say they didn't get it or whatnot, you could do that. And you will be able to resend the-- oh, here we go. It has this to resend. So this one here would resend it to-- oh, I resent it to her. I need to let her know not to accept. And then that way you could just simply do that.
Files, that's something I really-- right here when it says files, is just things that I upload with the students. It's not really a lot. Mainly what I use, so everything that I put in the homework, in the assignment, would appear right here as well.
Is Canvas like Google Classroom that if you have a paid account and send invitation to students? I really don't have experience with Google Classroom. So I would not be able to speak on that. What I will be able to say is that if you notice the students that I sent the invitation to, it was their personal email, except this one. Here the student had their Hartnell email.
But everybody else, it was their personal. So it could be a Google email. It could be Yahoo. It could be one from the community college. It's open to-- as you could see here, there's a student who has an email. This one here. .mx, that means it's an email that was created in Mexico. The student's still here. They're using that email.
So you don't need no-- and I think I know where the question's getting at, like when Melinda says you're in the club or you're not in the club. And this one, it doesn't matter the status. You can be in the Canvas club with-- how does she mention it-- with the pub account or the non-pub account. It's something like that. I'm remembering when she would talk about Google in that regard.
I know in this TDLS there is going to be a lot more sessions with Canvas. So I hope I have sparked your interest in you using Canvas. I just do have to say one thing. It's not going to be something that you can, I heard it today and I'm going to start implementing it tomorrow.
It will take time. As you could see just for me choosing the course, building the course, editing things, it will take time. And it will take a lot of onboarding your students on teaching them how to do this from the student side. With me it was easier because it was me and my team of two ESL teachers who we worked together in creating this. So you will have to invest some time.
But the payoff has been great. We've been able to keep student retention at about 75% to 80% because they're engaged in Canvas. So I know right now we're struggling a lot with student retention. So this is a great way to retain them. I would plan maybe for next school year if you're interested in doing something like this because we're already at March. Most of us end at the end of May.
So thank you very much. And please, please, please, do your evaluation for this session. I would really appreciate it, and it will really help me for my future presentations that I do. So let me see a couple of other-- was the interactive PDF-- the interactive PDFs were in the free version, yes.
So that one's for Linda Layman. It was in the free version. My students use Kami. Oh, yeah, I've heard of Kami too, yeah.
OK, so thank you very much everybody. Enjoy the rest of TDLS. Hopefully, next year it will be in person. And I cannot wait to actually be wandering around the class or wherever we're at in a real session, not just sitting here in a chair. [laughs] OK, thank you very much everybody.