2024-2025 BLaST End of Year Information

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Below is a list of resources and tools to help you close out the 2024-2025 School Year:

  • LaunchPoint Clean-Up:
    • TrustED Apps – please remember to review the TrustED Apps platform as digital resources are reviewed by your BLaST members and school leadership.
    • Update on DRAFT – AI Guidelines and Pilot
      • Pending decision – we expect to have an AI platform purchased for both teacher use and student use for the 25-26 school year.  Much more information coming for back to school.
    • Software Updates
      • SAFARI Montage access will be shut down June 30th, 2025
      • Newsela licensing will only be purchased for our middle and high schools for the 25-26 school year.
      • Nearpod licensing will only be purchase for our middle and high schools for the 25-26 school year.  Guidance about Nearpod for elementary teachers will be posted here soon.
  • Digging into Usage Data:
    • ClassLink Analytics had a recent overhaul, and we are working with ClassLink to better represent/visualize the usage data.
    • If we are able to get this addressed before school ends we will post a video with some summary district data for the 24-25 school year along with how you can compare your school’s usage data.
  • Wrapping Up 24-25 Courses:
    • Courses will conclude end of day on May 23rd and will be open to teachers until May 30th.  Courses will hard-conclude (disappear from Canvas dashboards) mid-June.
    • Identify courses which need to remain active (2-year)
      • IB Courses
  • Creating Canvas Courses for 25-26:
    • Using a Template?  Update before new courses are created.  Contact e-Learning (els@hallco.org) if you need help finding your school’s Canvas template or have general questions about using templates in Canvas.
    • Course naming convention – remember to have one and be sure to communicate it to your team members.
    • Make sure your teachers have at least one course created and aligned to the 25-26 Term so they will be sure to have access to Teacher Tools in July/August.
    • Continued emphasis on using Teacher Tools for course creation and rostering in Canvas.
    • Teacher Tools Functionality
      • Rostering
      • Associating blueprint courses (May 1st)
      • Grade Pass-Back
    • Importing teacher-made content from previous Canvas courses
  • Please Note:
    • Timing / Availability of IC rosters – roster data will be shared with our various vendors by mid-July, but it may take a while for the roster data to be visualized in the various platforms.  Our goal is to have everything operational by the first day of school, August 1st, 2025.
    • Teacher Sites Maintenance – after the last day of school, remember to turn off the Teacher Sites visibility for team members who will no longer be at your school.  Incoming team members will appear on your Teacher Site as they update/publish their Teacher Site for 25-26.

Thank you all for serving as BLaST Leaders for the 24-25 school year!  Have a wonderful, restful summer break!!

 

 

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Using Lucid in Canvas

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Maximize your Canvas experience with Lucid’s intuitive tools.

This integration gives educators and students alike an elevated teaching and learning experience in Canvas through interactive assignments, collaborative whiteboarding, and more engaging activities.

The Lucid team has built a central space for Canvas + Lucid resources to help support the new integration. This site provides documentation, videos, FAQs, and more to help users get started maximizing Lucid tools within Canvas. This hub is intended to help educators and students alike to understand the features available, applications of Lucid tools, training offerings, and supporting documentation to help with any additional administrative needs.

Note that this page is organized by role, so please feel free to explore the various resources available for each role, with additional options to view video tutorials, explore the help center, and more.

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Kami – A Powerhouse of Recently Updated Features!

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How to use Kami Class View with Canvas:

Kami’s Class View feature allows teachers to:

  • View the whole class’ Kami Assignment files at the same time.
  • Monitor the students’ progress and performance with real-time monitoring.
  • Leave feedback using a range of multimedia tools.
  • Grade multiple students’ work simultaneously.
  • Leave a grade and have it sync automatically to Canvas (which means it can sync to IC).

See the link here for all of the details on using Kami Class View with Canvas.

How to use Insights in Kami Class View

Insights will provide a deeper dive into the data during a Class View session.  Please see the link here for more details.

How to use Kami Questions AI

Convert existing or create AI-powered, auto-grading assessments for faster checks and better learning.

Click here to see how to allow the Kami Questions AI feature to save you time as a teacher

Creating Kami Assignments in Canvas

The Kami/Canvas integration is one of the deepest integrations we have enabled.  Please click here to see the steps on how to push out assignments using the Canvas LTI integration.

Kami Training Hub

The Kami Training Hub is a reliable and up-to-date resource for whatever you need to learn more about with Kami.

Full List of Kami Features

We encourage teachers to take a look at the full Kami feature list.  It is sometimes easy to miss how powerful this tool can be!

 

December Resources from Kami – ‘Tech the Halls’

Kami Export - Gregory Odell - Dec. Tech Tip
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Preparing Canvas for Second Semester

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As we prepare to begin the second semester, there are two items that we would like to highlight in order to have a successful and smooth semester with Canvas.

1.) Information for all teachers using Canvas

Often January brings new students into our schools and classrooms.  If these new students are added to a NEW roster in IC, teachers will need to open Canvas Teacher Tools and add the NEW roster to the correct Canvas course.  Also note that if a new student is added to an existing IC roster, the student will automatically be added to the corresponding Canvas course within 24 hours.  For a refresher on using Canvas Teacher Tools to add rosters, please visit Getting Started With Teacher Tools.

 

2.) Information for High School teachers using Canvas

Please review your Canvas courses and rosters that are currently being used in your Canvas courses.  If you have any “A” Rosters (first semester only), it is best practice to manually CONCLUDE each student’s enrollment.  By completing this action, you will provide the student a read-only version of the course since s/he is no longer actively enrolled in your course.  This action will also allow you to continue using Grade Passback without errors.

You can now manually conclude rosters from Teacher Tools!  Here is how:

 

3.) (Updated 2/14/25)  One nuance that has been brought to our attention is that the above step does not remove “Test Student” from the section within the Canvas course.  “Test Student” is created when a teacher uses the “Student View” in their course.  “Test Student” populates in all sections of the course the first time the teacher clicks “Student View”.  If a teacher uses “Student View”, and has A sections in their course they will need to manually delete the “Test Student” from the A section.  Please open your Canvas course, go to course Settings and manually remove “Test Student” from all “A” sections.

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Smart Search Now Available in Canvas

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Canvas Smart Search

The Smart Search feature is now available for teachers to enable in their Canvas courses. Below is how Instructure defines the Smart Search functionality:

“Our Smart Search feature relies on an AI-adjacent technology called ’embeddings.’ This technology “reads” the course content and creates a complex mathematical representation of each piece of content. When you perform a search, the technology ‘reads’ your query and converts it into a complex mathematical representation. The tool then compares the mathematical representations of both your search and course content to return relevant results; this result is returned with a ‘Confidence’ rating.”

As of June 1, 2024, searchable items include content pages, announcements, discussion prompts, and assignment descriptions, with plans to expand.

We feel it is important to note this feature is designed to respect course permissions. In other words, if your students are not able to access files in your course prior to enabling the Smart Search feature students should also not be able to search for and access those files after the feature is enabled.

Enabling Smart Search in a Course:

  1. Navigate to Course Settings > Feature Options
  2. Enable the Smart Search feature option

Once the teacher has enabled the feature it is up to the teacher if they want to add Smart Search to the course navigation. The teacher will still be able to access Smart Search even if it is not added to the course navigation for students. Please see the link here about managing course navigation links if teacher wants to enable Smart Search in the course navigation.

We hope you all enjoy the new Smart Search feature in Canvas, and for all of the detailed information please see the Help Guide here.

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