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Finding your Calendar in the Canvas Student app

| GSA Library

Need help finding outout what’s on your schedule this week? We can help you find out by using the Canvas Student app, which makes it really easy to find out what is happening on the go.

To look at your Canvas Calendar on your mobile phone:

  1. Search for the Canvas Student app in your app store
  2. Log in using your GSA details (take a look at How do students access Canvas? for help)
  3. Select the Calendar icon from the menu
  4. Select today’s date to see what is happening today

Tech Tip

If you prefer, we’ve made a video demonstrating how this works:

Creating icons and Buttons in the Rich Content Editor

Student Intranet
| roliva1

You can use the Canvas Icon Maker to create icons and buttons in Canvas that link to other content, such as a Module or Page. These icons are more accessible than any images of text you may have used in the past, because they are in SVG format. SVG files do not get blurry when we zoom in or use Canvas on a phone.

  1. Start by opening the Rich Content Editor (RCE) and then select the Icon Maker 
  2. Enter a name for your icon and provide alt text: the alt text should be the same as the text you’re planning to use in your icon
  3. Start to edit the shape, size, and colour of your icon: until you give your icon a colour, you won’t see the icon in the preview. Use the Adobe Color Contrast Analyzer (Links to an external site.) to select an accessible colour pallette
  4. Add your text and edit the colour and position. 
  5. If you like, select an image: the single colour images may work better than the multi colour images
  6. Select Apply
  7. Optional: to link your icon to a module or page, select the icon and then select Insert>Link>External/Course Link

To see these instructions in more detail, take a look at How do I create an icon using the Rich Content Editor Icon Maker? 

Creating Icons and Buttons in the Rich Content Editor Tech Tip

If you’d prefer to watch a video tutorial, take a look at the video below:

New Canvas Feature: Direct Share

| mfowler

Canvas have just released a useful new feature called Direct Share. This allows users with teacher permissions to copy items between canvas courses, and share content items with other teachers. Pages, assignments, quizzes and discussions can all be copied or shared from the pop-up options menu shown below.

You can copy items to any course you are an instructor on. This will include any assets such as files or images. When copying you will be prompted to choose the destination course, and a module within where the item will be placed.    

You can share items with other teachers within GSA. Again, this will include any assets such as files or images. Once the content has been sent, the recipient will receive a notification as shown below. It can then be viewed and imported into any of the recipient’s courses. 




For a step by step guide to using this new feature with individual pages please see the official Canvas documentation below:

How do I use Direct Share to send a page to another instructor?
How do I use Direct Share to copy a page to another course?

For further help using this or any other Canvas features please contact us in the Learning Technology Office in the GSA Library, or email us at LTHelp@gsa.ac.uk

Free and Quick Stock Images with Pexels.com

| mfowler

Old Camera Image
Image: http://www.pexels.com (Alex Andrews) 

If you need some stock images to liven up your Canvas course, you can try using www.pexels.com. The site is very quick and easy to search for and download images, with no sign-in required. All images are free to use, subject to its very generous licence (more info here.) The site operates on a ‘suggested donation’ model, encouraging you to make an optional donation to the artist before you download their image.

To insert your image into your Canvas page, choose the ‘Embed image’ option shown below, you will then be given the option to upload the image to your Canvas folder.

Embed Image Screenshot

Please remember to fill in the ‘alternative text’ option when inserting images. This provides screen readers with a description of the image, and helps increase the accessibility of your pages.     

Embedding Planet eStream content into Canvas

| mfowler

Here is a quick guide to embedding Planet eStream content into your Canvas course. For more details of how to create screen recordings please visit this guide on creating screencasts. 
To embed Planet eStream content into a Canvas page follow the simple process detailed below. 

  1.  In Planet eStream, select the content you would like to embed
  2.  In the video’s ‘Details’ area, select ‘Share’ then ‘Share by embedding’
  3. Copy the embed code supplied
  4. Switch to your Canvas page , and select ‘Insert/Embed Media’ from the toolbar
  5. Select the ’embed’ Tab and paste your embed code
  6. Click OK and Save your changes to the page. 

Plantet eStream Embed tutorial.gif

Happy New Year!
Learning Technology Team

Recovering deleted data in Canvas

| mfowler

Delete Page Image

Two easy-to-use methods to get your data back!

We all need to recover data at some point – a previous version of a file or a deleted course page we need to use again. The two methods detailed below will help you recover your lost data.

1. Recover previous versions of a page:

You can recover previous versions of a page in Canvas by accessing the Revision History for that page. To do this, click the options icon in the top right of the page you want to recover (the three vertical dots) to access the page options. From here select ‘View Page history’ to access your previous versions. 😀

Gif of restore process

2. Recover a deleted page: 

Canvas has a hidden feature called ‘undelete’ to recover deleted content from your courses. To access the feature simply add /undelete to the url of your course in your browser’s address bar. For example if your course url is 
your new url would be 
From here you can restore any previously deleted content!  😀
If you need any further help recovering lost data you can visit the Learning Technology office in the Library or contact us at lthelp@gsa.ac.uk

The 12 Apps of Christmas

| mfowler

The Digital Education Unit at University of Glasgow has gathered 12 apps that they think may be useful in teaching and learning for online and distance education.

Starting on the 9th of December 2019 they will reveal one app per day for 12 consecutive working days. They have added some festive cheer by creating a different short Christmas themed game for each day which you will need to complete before the app for that day is revealed. Each game should only take around 5 minutes to play.

If you prefer not to play the game don’t worry, you’ll be able to still see the app for the day.

The aim is to showcase the creativity and work the Digital Education Unit provides and to give you some new ideas for ways that the 12 Apps can be used in online learning.

Find all the fun at uofgdigitaled.com. Hope you enjoy it! 

Linkedin Learning – formerly Lynda.com – is a fantastic free resource for GSA

| mfowler

Linkedin Leraning

As a GSA student or staff member, you have free access to all the contents on Linkedin Learning.

This online platform offers video tutorials and short courses on many topics which are beneficial for your studies and beyond.

Some of the most popular Linkedin Learning courses are on software applications useful to designers, architects and artists including the Adobe CC suite, Revit, ZBrush and Rhino, as well as most of the other software available on GSA Library computers.

Linkedin Learning can be accessed both on and off campus.

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Here are instructions for logging into Linkedin Learning:
https://lib.gsa.ac.uk/?s=linkedin+learning

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There’s more to Linkedin Learning than software tutorials! 

Here are just a few of the many and varied courses you can check out on Linkedin Learning:

If you have any problems logging on or any questions, please contact learning technology: lthelp@gsa.ac.uk