Canvas:
New Discussions
Great new features
You will now be able to create anonymous discussions and have students tag each other in their replies. The most dramatic new feature is the split screen. Users will now be able to open responses to a comment thread on a side window, while keeping the main discussion board on the left side of the screen. You can learn more about these exciting new discussion features in this blog post.
Some learning curves
At the same time, the new interface requires more clicks and some getting used to. We wrote this post to let you know about the main concerns early adopters cited.
One bug to note
In some discussions, the ‘Disallow threaded replies’ boxes were checked. That means that students are not able to respond to each other’s comments, only to the main discussion post. If you like students replying to each other, please make sure the box is unchecked in your discussion settings! Canvas is aware of the bug and is working on a fix.
More cool new Canvas features
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- You knew about giving students video comments in Speedgrader, now you can also record your screen and give screencast comments as well!
- The “Assign To” function for assignments is now available for modules too.
- Canvas Inbox got an upgrade! You can set up an out-of-office message and a signature.
WordPress:
Major update: block editor!
The new block based editor replaces the classic WordPress editor and is a significant change in how content is created. With the block editor, you can add multiple media types and arrange the layout within the editor. We’ve enabled the block editor as the default editor for new sites. Site administrators can enable/disable the availability of classic editor and block editor on their site, and can allow switching between the two.
New themes
We’ve added four new versatile and accessibility-ready themes: Modern, Twenty Nineteen, Twenty Twenty, and Twenty Twenty-One. Check out them out by visiting Themes on your site dashboard to preview and/or enable them on your site.
Sa11y now available on all blogs
Sa11y is an accessibility checker for content creators. While most accessibility tools are designed for developers and often require knowledge of code, Sa11y is designed for content authors and focuses on content related issues. Sa11y will appear to logged-in users with edit privileges when you view your site, and will point to accessibility issues you can fix. Visitors to your site will not see Sa11y.
