Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
i'm gonna show you how to use canvas to have a conference
uh... or some online synchronous meeting
with students in your class
so obviously we log into our canvas account
and then we'll change the course
into the course we want to have a conference in
so in the
course home page on the left is a list of tools
towards the bottom is the conference tool
so i'll select that
and then in the
right panel
that brings up a "make a new conference" button
so that's the the
one I want but
to create a new conference
i can choose to have it uh...
run for any length of time including open-ended so it's always available
and i can give it a description
so that when i invite course members they know
what they're attending
i can choose to invite all the members in the enrolled in this course
or by deselect that i'd get a list of individual members that i
can selectively invite
and finally I'll create the conference
so that doesn't start the conference but it's schedules it and puts it into
the list of conferences
waiting to get started
so at any point now within my course shell
i can go into the list of conferences
and this news conference will show up with a "start it now" button
so let's say that i've uh... schedule this to be during class time so that
students know to come into CANVAS and
log-on at a certain time
i would go and start the conference a few minutes before I expect them to be
logging in
and the first thing i get is a request to use
my computer's webcam and microphone so I can stream audio and video
you don't need to do this you could have a conference with just text chat
and sharing files but i'm gonna go ahead and allow that
it's it's a good idea to test your configuration first
you can play a test sound
make sure that if you're
using headphones that they're properly plugged in
the computers's audio is turned
to an appropriate level
and once you confirm that
you can check the your microphones picking up signals
so look at the little uh...
visual display of the microphone volume
if you're not seen anything you can change
the microphone that
your computer system is using to any other microphones you've connected to your
computer
so you might have a microphone connected via usb or one attached to your webcam
you can select that here
change the
level of the microphone so that
those listening to you hear you at a comfortable volume
okay so once i have done that
we go into our conference web page
this is all right inside a web browser so there's no particular software to
install
although it does use adobe flash which means it won't work on an ipad
up top is a list of participants in the conference
so i'm gonna go ahead and uh...
use my
second computers sitting on a desk right now
to log in to this conference as a second
attendee
all right so "Peter Beyersdorf" that's me on the moderator
and this "peteman" is a second accounted of created for the purpose of
testing this conference
right so you see this little icon here in the status bar
that indicates who the presenter is
now the presenter of the conference can do a couple things
first is when you mouse over this whiteboard area
in this center
the center pain
of the conference web page
is a virtual whiteboard
and you can see that the mouse
carries along with it a little red dot that represents a pointer
to use that to draw viewers attention to various points
on the white board
The other thing I can do as a presenter
is i can
use this button up here to share my desktop
so if i want to give a power point presentation
or navigate through uh... website using a web browser and have my students follow
along
the be easiest ways to do that is just with this
tell the computer i share my full screen
or just a region
which will let me drag a rectangle proportion of the screen
that streams
to the other participants
so once i do that i can see a little preview of what my screen looks like
in this uh...
little popup window
and i can run a presentation and all the animations
and all of the usual
uh...
effect of
presenting, but I'm
just streaming over the internet for the
purpose of this conference
okay so let me go ahead and close that since that's actually not what i'm interested in
doing
but the presenter can either share his or her screen
or drive the whiteboard
and i can
click on a user and
hit the "switch presenter" button and that gives the other user
a chance
to drive the screen
now i can see the little red pointer on the white board that's being
controlled
by my student
or the uh... other
user logged into the account
and that student could also share
share their screen
and drive the conference that way
and when i'm ready to be the presenter again I just click on my name and clicks "switch presenters"
now i'm back in control of the conference
okay so a few things I might want to do
uh... I'm streaming my audio right now
but i might wanna listen to what my student has to say
in particular my student might have a question
and if that's the case he or she could click on this little "hand raised" button
and uh... i can see that the hand is raised here
so i could ask the student
did you have question
at this point uh...
if the student is
streaming his or her audio I should be able to hear the response
and I might want to mute my own audio
while the student is talking
so i can just click on the microphone icon next to my name and that mutes my
audio
uh... likewise a student might be done giving
their questions
and so now i don't want to hear that the sound of the TV in the background
where the student is working
So I Can click on the microphone next to their name
and of course there might be times we have a large class a lot of people having their
microphones i just need all of them
muted
so we have control over
individuals microphones
uh... we can also lock
the microphone status so that it's not accidentally changed
and once i've uh... address my student's comment I mighty click on their hand
dismiss it so they can see that next time
that they raise their hand
otherwise i may communicate
i've got this uh... chat over here
so i can enter text information here
i can highlight
various things by changing the color
of the text
and i can have uh...
have a back-channel chat while my lecture going on in real time among the states
i might also choose to stream video
so this uh...
this toolbar or top is the
streaming
toolbar
it lets me stream my desktop, my video or my audio,
so go ahead and click on that webcam button
that gives me a preview of the webcam
so I'll make myself look nice
and when I hit that little "play" button
that actually start streaming video
and so
that video appears here in the dock
we're not limited to just a single streaming video
i can have my
second user
which happens to be laptop sitting at my desk right over there
participate in a video conference aswell and now i have multi-way videoconference
just by clicking
on the "X" here I can turn off
either of these videos
and i can see here that uh...
"peteman" is still broadcasting video even though i've
closed the video from the dock because i want to be distracted by it
but I can click that and bring that back up
and close it at any point
video will be available to me as long as
that user is streaming video
and to stop streaming the videos user can close their own video window ok
the last thing that i'm going to show you involves the white board here
uh... to give a presentation
i can upload a presentation to the white board
uh... not all file formats can be uploaded
PDF worked quite nicely
so I'll upload a
pdf
of my class lecture notes
it converts them into
the appropriate whiteboard format
and now i can see that
i've got twenty seven pages to my whiteboard that I can navigate to
using these buttons here
in and out of
i've got my red dot I can use to point at various portions of the
whiteboard
that'll be streams to my students computers
and if I want to annotate
the slides i have the option
using this uh...
annotation toolbar that pops up
right click on the uh... note pad on the bottom right
so I can do things like draw lines
i can change the way to those lines appear
and the color of
those lines using
uh... that toolbar
and i can choose
shapes
from the toolbar as well
and i can remove the annotations at any point
and i can go through my slides
and
give a lecture from
within
the confines of this uh... web browser
and remember if i wanted to actually use my original powerpoint
presentation with all it's animations and such i can do that using "share desktop"
button
so if i would have logged out
that doesn't kill the conference is just loggs me out of it
i can join back in if there are other people
still participating
uh... one thing you might notice that at this
conferences are not being recorded
so these are useful for synchronous communication
but they're not recorded
uh... that will probably change within the next uh... sometime in early two
thousand thirteen
the software is being developed and is in beta stage now
for recording these conferences