Are you a beginner artist? Canvas is the perfect app to start learning how to draw. It’s easy to use, and it lets you start drawing right away.
If you are a more advanced artist, Canvas is great for creating digital art and sharing it with other artists across the world. You can also connect with other artists through social media on the Canvas platform.
You can choose from a variety of different drawing tools and backgrounds for your creations, as well as brushes, colors, and effects. The app also has an undo button so that you can go back if you make a mistake during your art creation process!
Best Apps For Canvas
Canvas has this great wealth of tools that are just waiting to be deployed into your course. These tools are located in Canvas’ EduAppCenter. There are hundreds of apps in the EduAppCenter, so I thought I’d summarize just a few of the interesting ones available there, and some others that are available on the web. Many of these tools are free, others cost money or are subscription based for added features. Faculty and students alike are always asking for more collaborative tools, so I’ve mostly selected tools that have a collaborative slant.
How do I find the apps?
From the Settings area of your course site click on Settings, and then Apps, to find the EduAppCenter!
On to the apps!
trello logo1. Trello
Trello is a visual list tool that can be used for project management, collaboration, and much more! When Trello launched in 2011, the developers described it as “a web page where you make a bunch of lists. Each list contains cards. Each card is a thing that someone might want to work on” (Trello Launch blog post). On the back of each card, there’s room for including a description, conversations, file attachments, links, checklists, labels, and more. So why use this instead of just covering your whiteboard in post it notes? You can invite others to collaborate with you on your Trello board. So this tool ends up being useful for group projects, collaborations with your colleagues, etc.
One of its strong suits is providing templates that can help get you started (see links below). And the best part? It integrates into Canvas. Just go to your Canvas course, click on Settings > Apps and search the app center for Trello. Trello can be added into Assignments and Modules as an External Tool. Tip: You must first create a Public board in your Trello account (and grab the board ID) in order to add it to your Canvas site via the LTI.
TL;DR
Trello is a list-making, task-delegating, collaboration tool.
Cost: Free.
Integrates into Canvas from App Center.
More About Trello
Board of Templates
More Templates
Use Trello Like a Pro
How to find your Trello Board ID
padlet logo
2. Padlet
Padlet is a similar tool to Trello, but simplified. It presents more like a Pinterest board, but without all the clutter and ads. Padlet’s website describes the tool as, “Somewhere between a doc and a full-fledged website builder, Padlet empowers everyone to make the content they want, whether it’s a quick bulletin board, a blog, or a portfolio” (What is Padlet?) The “free” version of Padlet is generously-featured enough to be used in a classroom or for group projects. You can collaborate with classmates or colleagues in Padlet simply by knowing their email address.
Compared to Trello, which is project-oriented, Padlet is set up more like social media- a user posts text, a link, or a file- and other users may comment on, favorite, rank, or even grade the posting (based on settings you select). A benefit of Padlet over Trello is that Padlet can be set up to be private. Trello can also be private, but not if you want to use the Canvas integration. Padlet offers mobile apps, and the option to share or embed a full board into Canvas. There is currently no LTI integration for Canvas, but Padlet provides simple instructions on how to embed into Canvas. There are also mobile apps and browser plug-ins available to make adding to your Padlet wall easier!
TL;DR
Padlet is a media-rich bulletin-board, Pinterest-y, collaboration tool
Cost: Free, decent feature set (with ability to upgrade)
No direct integration, needs to be embedded into Canvas content page.
More about Padlet
Educational Resources & Reviews
Make your own Padlet
flipgrid logo
3. Flipgrid
From edshelf.com, “Flipgrid is an active, social learning platform that engages learners through video-based discussion. The app extends the web-based environment and creates new possibilities for reflection, discussion, demonstration and collaboration.” Instructors create a “grid” with a topic, and create a short (2.5 min or less) video prompt to share with the class. Then the students respond with their own videos! Students may reply to other videos with their own videos (90 seconds or less).
Use cases for Flipgrid include Introduction or Ice Breaker videos for online classes, or weekly discussions around readings or current events. The downside of Flipgrid is that it is free to use, but you may only create 1 grid in a class (with unlimited Topics and responses) with a Free account- so if you teach more than one class at a time that you’d like to use Flipgrid in, you can purchase an upgrade if desired. Flipgrid integrates seamlessly into Canvas and has mobile apps as well. To try it in your Canvas course, just go to Settings > Apps in your course site, and search for Flipgrid.
TL;DR
Flipgrid is a quick, fun, video recording collaboration tool
Cost: Free, limited functionality (with ability to upgrade)
Integrates into Canvas seamlessly
More about Flipgrid
Info about Flipgrid (official site)
Flipgrid teaching tips and reviews
Piazza logo
4. Piazza
Piazza is a free, easy to use Q&A discussion platform that can be used as an alternative to the native Canvas Discussions tool. Some of the differences between Piazza and Canvas’ Discussion board is that the discussions are more like a traditional online forum, and as a bonus- are filterable and searchable! Comments occur in real time, so students can leave their browser open and see answers appear on the screen. Students also have the option to remain anonymous to their peers, which relieves some of the intimidation of ‘speaking in front of the class.’ Instructors have the ability to endorse correct answers to help steer the class in the right direction.
Piazza integrates directly into Canvas and at WPI is already added to your course (it’s just hidden by default)! For WPI faculty, all you need to do is go to your course Settings area, then click on the Navigation tab at the top of the page. Locate the Piazza link under “Drag items here to hide them from students” and click and drag it to the top of the page to show it in your left-hand navigation. Don’t forget to click Save.
TL;DR
Piazza is a Q&A style discussion board that allows anonymous posting
Cost: Free
Integrates into Canvas (WPI faculty, check your Settings > Navigation area to enable it)
More about Piazza
About Piazza
Piazza Support
feed the me logo
5. Feed the Me
Feed the Me is an open source, free, news feed aggregator that you can integrate into your Canvas course.
From Feed the Me’s description in the EduAppCenter: “Feed The Me lets teachers aggregate a number of news feeds (Atom or RSS), filtered by tags, within the course environment. For example, this might be relevant blogs or news feeds from external sources, or perhaps a collection of student-produced blogs. Teachers can allow Students to add their own news feeds to the course feeds list, and can even submit a feed to fulfill an assignment requirement.”
To add this app, you’ll need a Twitter account in order to generate a key and secret. Make sure you save that information, because you’ll enter it to configure the app in Canvas. To configure, go to Settings > Apps and enter the key and secret when prompted. Don’t worry- you can enter a custom name for the app, you don’t need to see a confusing “Feed the Me” link in your class. I called mine something boring like “NewsFeeds.”
TL;DR
Feed the Me is a newsfeed aggregator for your class.
It’s open source, free to use, and integrates directly into Canvas.
You can allow students to contribute their own feeds!
best apps for canvas 2
These apps, plug-ins and tools all integrate directly into Canvas LMS and once activated can only enhance your experience as an educator to make you more valuable to your students… while saving you valuable time along the way.
How much do these apps cost?
Many of these apps are totally free, and all of them offer at least some free plan for teachers and students that might need to be purchased or enabled at the school/institution level. These apps are intended to serve K12 & Higher Ed students.
Where do I find the apps?
We’ll link to each of the apps below so you can download or integrate them directly from their websites. Additionally, many of these Apps can be added directly from the Canvas platform once you’re in a Course by going to Settings > Apps.
2021 Best Apps for Teachers and Faculty Using Canvas LMS
Without further ado, let’s take a look at these apps!
Quizlet: App for Flashcards and Study Games
If you somehow haven’t heard of Quizlet before, it’s pretty likely that your students have and that they love it. Quizlet is a mobile app that allows teachers (or students) to create simple and easy flashcards to study for tests, quizzes, assignments and anything else they might need to.
Why we love it
One of my personal favorite features of Quizlet is that the Flashcard Decks can be saved and made public so that future classes can find them and use them without having to recreate the wheel. Additionally, Quizlet has recently introduced free study sets, study modes and in-class games so you can instantly create a more engaged classroom.
Boost: Assignment Reminders That Work
Boost is a Mobile App that takes existing Canvas data around assignment due dates and sends students intelligent reminders on assignments that haven’t yet been submitted. Students can also add their own reminders and create a planner of tasks to be done. Boost is backed by peer-reviewed and published research that shows that in deploying this simple app, teachers can improve the grades in B-F students by 10%… a full letter grade.
Why we love it
We love Boost because it’s a no-brainer. It takes a task that teachers were already doing (reminding students to turn in assignments) and automates it for them. The research shows that these reminders are actually even more effective than teacher reminders. Schools that want to implement Boost into their classrooms should reach out here. When I found out that Canvas wasn’t already sending these reminders, it was a no-brainer to get my school to activate Boost.
Trello: Collaboration Tool
Trello is a task and project management system. It’s a collaborative tool that’s made to replace post-it notes or having students keep track of their own to-dos and tasks at hand. One of Trello’s awesome features is that it provides premade templates for all sorts of tasks that teachers and students will do on a regular basis (group projects, weekly planner, personal tasks, etc.) Trello is a tool that you as an instructor might find as equally useful as your students do!
Why we love it
Trello, and other project management software that it is similar to, are commonplace in many work environments in the “real world”. That’s why we love it– what better way to teach students how to use tools that they’ll be using in the future than to have them use them right now.
Github Classroom: Track, Manage and Grade Coding Assignments for Developers
Github Classroom is designed for those teaching software development or coding classes. Although this is a fairly niche product, it’s invaluable for those who need it. Managing and organizing your class is easy with GitHub Classroom. Track and manage assignments in your dashboard, grade work automatically, and help students when they get stuck— all while using GitHub, the industry-standard tool developers use.
Why we love it
As we look forward to a world increasingly run by software, it’s important to make sure we’re embracing the change that’s upon us. The more of our students who are familiar with the tools of the future, the better we’re preparing them for that world. If you’re teaching a course that’s focused on software engineering, then this tool is a must-have for you to easily grade your student’s work, right from your Canvas instance.
InScribe: Community-Powered Support
We made it all the way to #5 before we mentioned something about “the new normal” or “a post-COVID world”, aren’t you proud of us? All jokes aside, as institutions shift to a world that has made it clear that it wants to function in a hybrid model, if not an entirely virtual world, we must adapt to the changing environment. InScribe offers one way to help instructors and schools do just that. InScribe’s Q&A communities create a space for students, faculty and staff to work together—asking questions, finding answers, and sharing resources. InScribe captures these valuable interactions, and makes them reusable, so each generation benefits from the conversations that came before them.
Why we love it
We love InScribe because not only does it help teachers and schools create a better learning environment in the present moment, but it also saves those insights and arranges them for future years to use and learn from as well. Anytime that we can take work that’s already been done and make it available for future generations, we’ll consider that a win. No need to recreate the wheel!
Nearpod: Real-time insights into interactive lessons
Nearpod has nailed the interactive and real time learning module design. The ability to have students actively participate during lessons while we’re living in this hybrid world is invaluable. There are a whole host of learning module systems out there that try to help teachers better organize their content and lesson plans but very few of them allow students to engage as actively with the content as Nearpod does.
Why we love it
Learn by doing. Nearpod puts an emphasis on active engagement of students while giving teachers real-time insights into how their students are learning. We love this synchronous approach to learning. There’s no better time to harness and engage with student attention then when you’re actively giving a lesson and Nearpod allows you to do just that.
Kami: Collaborative Teaching Environment
Kami takes interactivity that we mentioned earlier with Nearpod one step further and enables collaboration amongst students. It’s also an easy platform for the uploading and sharing of files that students can then collaborate on. Collaboration is such an important part of learning and anything that you as an instructor can do to enable this collaboration just makes learning easier for you and your students.
Why we love it
Similar to Nearpod, Kami has a focus on collaborative document sharing. We wanted to include both on this list as one of the most important considerations there is when vetting a new tool to use in your classroom is how well it integrates with your existing setup. Kami integrates with the best and the brightest in the Ed Tech world including Canvas, Google Classroom, Schoology, Blackboard, PowerSchool and many more. When you’re evaluating any of these tools don’t forget to look at how well they integrate with your current setup!
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