Themes and Theme voting are currently on hold as the Instructure Product Team works on implementing a better solution to collect your feedback. Read Ruth's blog for more information.
I will have to check that out. The problem with adding it to all published courses would be that the same event would be repeated numerous times on the calendar.
I'm still a Canvas rookie, but how can something be in radar for 2 years and not be implemented? I am wondering about a District Wide calendar, as well. Not finding answers easily.
My school has been able to institute school-wide calendars by creating a course and adding all faculty to it as teachers. No one uses the actual course for anything other than the calendar and everyone can turn it on/off in their calendar controls. We currently use this for an "Assessment Calendar" where teachers add their major assessments and all teachers can see when they are scheduled. This is to make sure students are not overloaded on specific days.
I could see this approach working for many of the situations people have asked about in this thread. For any group (account, sub-account, etc) that needs a calendar, you would just need to create a course and add all those who need to be able to see the calendar as students and those who need to edit it as teachers. No one uses the course structure, but now it is listed as a calendar for all those added and viewing it can be turned on and off as needed.
We are also in the process of setting up a "Faculty Info Center" course in which will have all faculty added as students and the admin as teachers so that info can be distributed easily. Along with the course we are exploring ways to use the API to push our main school calendar (which is external to Canvas) events to the calendar (using google scripts) so teachers have 1 calendar system to work in.
This author was given a suggestion to post here a distillation of a comment made elsewhere about "how can I sync my Google(tm) / whatever calendar and Canvas calendar? .
There are actually two parts to the comment:
a) "how to do the calendar"
b) whether the expended energy on the part of the Canvas time is justiied.
A) It is the opinion of this author that the situation about "merging my calendar with my phone / home computer is really a situation of "the emPHAsis on the wrong SYLLAAHble"
The user is almost always totally oblivious about "what has to be done" they want "to see the thing on my phone and the school computer".
The developer always concentrates on "what needs to be done" but is often also has "one way of thinking" about a situation because of the words that are used in the discussion.
What the user wants is: " I want to see my tweaks of the Canvas calendar on my phone ( or at home on my home computer).
What is left unstated is that "the college as a master academic calendar on my school computer and my home computer and maybe on my phone that I can VIEW. The teacher cannot interact with it.
HOWEVER, my little nook in the great universe of colleges actually provided a .csv file which we could put on our "home / phone " computer which had the school's academic calendar on it.
In other words, ON A PERSONAL PHONE OR COMPUTER the user could interact with the file.
This file is not "dynamic" ( that will be addressed later ).
It is only tweakable by the user and viewable by the user.
What is missed in the "question" "When will canvas let me put the IMPLIED Canvas ONLY that the teacher has tweaked for the student that is IN THE CLASS part of Canvas. Again, the UNstated implication is that the teacher makes tweaks in the Canvas generic calendar and then downloads it to the local phone or computer or.... can put the Google or local calendar BACK ONTO the Canvas Class' calendar.
What is not thought about by the user is the implication that a change on one will automatically sync with the other. Or, is at least "replaceable by new file".
So, to the point of this comment.
The emphasis is on the wrong syllable.
B) The college already has a master calendar for the next year or two years. The teacher cannot interact with this calendar unless the college provides it as a "feed" for maybe.....the teacher's subsite. This was done primitively a few years ago at another college where I was participating.
C) Canvas has a calendar "within the INDIVIDUAL section's part" of Canvas. In other words, this author can place tweak section one differently from section two and I ....as the teacher, can observe both or individaully. The student sees only the individual section.
D) WE MUST NOW STEP BACK to look at this from a "nervous administrator". The nervous administrator wants to not have some "hacker" somehow be able to "hack" the calendar... it has to be "one way".
So, how can both situations be addressed?
E) the two end user cases.
a) the student end user now can see the tweaked calendar WITHIN the section on Canvas. The student cannot interact with it only view it.
b) the teacher end user can tweak the generic COLLEGE calendar within each section and can download that to a local device but cannot upload tweaks back to the calendar within Canvas.
c) the teacher end user who is already using a smart phone or home computer to interact with THIRD PARTY calendars such as Gmail(tm) calendar wants to be able to "interact" with the Canvas calendar but that is probably NOT ...
what they "really" want.
What they "really" want is to have " possibly " the college's calendar on both the Canvas calendar and their local (Gmail(tm) ) calendar so that they have "everything in one place".
So the question is how to provide what the teacher end user "think" that they want on their local device ( phone / home computer).
This really is a rather simple fix in term of the idea but not necessarily the coding.
F) The local Canvas person at the college acts as an interface to provide the "college calendar" as a file to the Canvas Calendar app so that:
i) the teacher end user can optionally choose to include the college file in this class or that class or all classes
ii) the teacher end user has it willy nilly.
G) the teacher can then tweak the provided calendar from the college within Canvas.
H) the Canvas calendar can then be downloaded to the teacher's local device as an .ical or as a .csv.
This is not the same as "syncing" and it does not need to so be.
"syncing" implies that the calendar NEEDS to be synced daily or whatever.
The college's calendar is fixed YEARS down the road.
Now, yes, the college may change a few things around such as "celebrating" something in a particular week such as a "home game celebration".
The actual end user teacher will probably SELDOM actually "tweak" a section's canvas calendar on a local device or through a calendar app on a home computer BACK UP to the Canvas calendar.
What the teacher end user will almost always do is tweak the calendar WITHIN the canvas section's INTERFACE.
What is being advocated is ....
......that the teacher end user who actually uses and end device can download a tweaked version of the college's calendar and then has all things on one device...
H) So, the answer then falls out as a simple idea.
i) the Canvas interface places, or works with the IT people, to place into "Canvas" as a generic UPLOAD by the Canvas interface....the college calendar into the particular section.
or)
ii)The Canvas interface places the college's calendar into ALL canvas calendars which cannot be tweaked in the local section except manually by the end user teacher.
iii) The teacher end user can then tweak the local section calendar which may or may not have the college's calendar on it so that the end user student merely observes the calendar.
iv) the teacher end user can be provided with TWO options to download the PREVIOUSLY tweaked calendar as a .ical or .csv file onto their local machine or smart phone.
THE UNINTENDED consequence of this for the teacher enduser who has the now tweaked college / canvas / canvas local section / tweaked calendar ON THEIR LOCAL smart phone or computer is that the downloaded calendar is then static.
The situation is NOT BAD....
If it is stated ON THE DOWNLOAD PAGE..... that the teacher will have to DELETE the PRESENT calendar which is on the teacher end user device....
and then REload the newly tweaked calendar then....
everything falls out like Golden Apples from the Sun.
I ) The worried administrator does not have a concern because nothing is "uploaded" from a hacker or a novice teacher end user.
II) the student sees .....maybe.....once every few days.....the tweaked calendar in the Canvas section and has no idea of what is going on behind the scenes.
III) the teacher end user who actually has "cross platform" enabled "some kind of college calendar thing" and "home use calendar" has the ....admittedly.....ONE WAY method of....
not "syncing" up and down in a minute to minute situation ....
but then.... what does the teacher actually DO?
The teacher usually tweaks a calendar once and then done...
So.....the teacher end user has....on the phone......."the college calendar"...."the tweaked section calendar which is HOLDING the college calendar and their "home calendar"..
One way to think of it is the Venn Diagram as opposed to "syncing" or "merging".
The outer circle of the Venn Diagram is the college's master calendar which may or may not be included in the local section's calendar.
The next inner circle is the tweaked section's calendar.
The innermost circle is the teacher end user's device with can have:
the college master calendar, the local section's calendar, the home / whatever / Gmail(tm) calendar.
The idea is very simple.
The code, however, may not be so straightforward.
b) it is suggested that to determine if this is actually DESIRED that:
i) the local populace of Canvas users be polled, which is really "preaching to the choir".
ii) the college interface person(s) poll the actual college instructors as to whether this is actually needed.
The Canvas team can then consider such data.
just a few thoughts, of little worth.
james
P.S. Ummmm the original suggestion was that I provide a CONCISE..... post....ummm that didn't happen!
Having an admin/institutional calendar where dates can be added that will show up on all students calendars would be helpful in pushing out things such as dates to register, dates to withdraw from a course. We have them on our website but often students are looking at their Canvas calendars for assignment due dates much more than going to campus websites. By being able to place them on a calendar for all students within Canvas they will more likely see what is coming up for important dates.
As a district new to Canvas, we are marketing the LMS as an enhancement to efficiency. We've noticed with new teacher adoptions that immediately, if a user would like events such as term end dates, holidays, etc. reflected on the calendar within Canvas, he/she has to manually schedule each and every event.
This is the exact opposite of efficient. Every other program we utilize that includes a calendar feature has the ability to import our gcal to be reflected for all users.
Please consider this feature request. It is a basic necessity for productivity.
I could even work with having the ability as an account admin to manually schedule events that trickle down to all other calendars if the one way sync from gcal can't be accomplished.
As an institution, we have common events that need to be posted to everyone's calendar in Canvas. (Global Event) For example the first day of school, holidays, major events, site closings, deadlines, book returns, end of semester and graduation. Ideally, the admin would be able to post an event to account-level (everyone, students, parents, or teachers (etc.)) calendars, in the same manner as an announcement is sent out through the system. This seems like a simple task that could benefit a variety of organization and institutions.
I have seen this popup on the boar several times, so know others are looking for the same thing. Help me boots it up for Canvas to add this simple feature. We have been waiting too long and deferring users to add a Google option is a quick work around, but not a real fix.
