From The Archives: Setting Up Your Learning Management System (LMS) - E056

In this episode, we are exploring ways to set up your Learning Management System (LMS) effectively and efficiently to optimize course organization and learning for your students. We'll go over tips, strategies, and ideas for setting up your LMS, whether it is Brightspace, Canvas, Schoology, Google Classroom, or something else.

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Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/56**

• Use your LMS, even if you are fully face-to-face
• Layout and Homepage:
  • This is your doorway into your virtual classroom
  • Easy navigation - minimize the links to the essentials
  • Link all of your other tools within the content area
  • Include contact info on homepage
  • Announcements 
  • Brightspace Part 1 and Brightspace Part 2 episodes
• Organization:
  • Embed third party tools (EdPuzzle, Google Slides, YouTube videos, etc) into your content area
  • Link in Google Docs when it makes sense
  • Use consistent naming & numbering systems (reduces cognitive load)
  • Folders - units, weeks, whatever works best for you
  • Use your announcements to lay out weekly expectations
  • Include student voice in planning and organization
  • Include visuals and make it look pretty - design is important (consistent fonts, icons, emojis, etc to reduce cognitive load and increase engagement)
  • It's okay to set up your LMS to meet your needs, just make sure you create an intro video to help your students navigate it - Screencastify is great!
  • Canva is a great tool for design - Canvas Banner, Canvas Button, Google Classroom Header (also a Style Your LMS category available)
• Inclusion Ideas:
  • Include important cultural celebrations 
  • Add your personality - Bitmoji or GIPHY is great and integrated into Canva
  • Have students design your classroom banners - include languages represented in your classroom too
  • Design With Canva YouTube channel
• A Scary Suggestion:
  • A little bit of basic coding (HTML and CSS) goes a long way!
  • Code Academy (look under Web Development)
  • This helps with interactive elements in your LMS - buttons, flipcards, etc.
• Final Advice:
  • Use student-friendly language to increase accessibility

Transcript

Rachel: 0:24

Welcome to the Edge U Gals podcast. We are your co-host Rachel Johnson and

Katie: 0:29

Katie Atwell. We are here to bring you tips and tricks to help you integrate technology into your classroom.

Rachel: 0:39

In this episode, Katie and I are gonna be talking all about how to set up your virtual learning environment for the upcoming school year. We are

Katie: 0:48

going to give you some tips and strategies on how you can make it safe. And inclusive and easily accessible for all of your students.

Rachel: 0:56

Let's get started. This week, Katie and I are gonna be talking all about how to set up your virtual learning space, so how to create a space that's safe and inclusive for your students, and also like really well organized and efficient for use. Sort of, especially because, you know, we've been, at least in our district, have been using Brightspace for over a year now. We thought we'd talk about some of the tips and tricks to get us started. Yeah. We're, we're

Katie: 1:33

very hopeful for return to in-person learning this fall. But if there's anything that we have learned over this past year and a half, it's that. Best laid plans tend to fail miserably, so you have to be ready for a backup plan. So while it would be great to not have to do any sort of virtual spaces, the reality is probably that we need to still include some of that for this coming school year.

Rachel: 1:58

Yeah, and a virtual learning space is great, even if you are fully. Face-to-face. So having that digital space and blending your learning in your classroom can be super, super useful for you and your students.

Katie: 2:12

I think part of the hesitation, and here I go, um, Before, when we were in person, we were allowed to use Google Classroom as a virtual space cuz it's just so easy to navigate and students knew it and it's kind of just very simple. But with this shift, and I don't know if it was coincidental with the pandemic, but this whole idea of using Brightspace, which is more cumbersome and uh, harder to kind of navigate and set up in such a way, I think a lot of us. At least that I know of are really hoping for a little more flexibility with what virtual space we use. But I suppose time will tell. So yes. So we'll still kind of share the, the approved LMS that we are working with, but we'll also give some general tips for any sort of LMS that you may be

Rachel: 3:01

using. Yeah, so we've been using Brightspace as if you've been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you, you would know that and you would know our. Our likes and our dislikes with the platform. But really any of the, the tips we talk about here today, you could do in like Canvas or you could do in Google Classroom or Schoology or any of those LMS platforms. Okay.

Katie: 3:25

So why don't we get started with, let's see, let's talk a little bit about layout and homepage.

Rachel: 3:30

Yeah, I think that's a really good starting place cuz you wanna kind of think about. How you wanna lay things out this year, especially in terms of organization and what it's gonna look like for your students when they first log in, because. If you think about your virtual learning space, basically when they first come in and jump onto that homepage, it's like them walking into the door of your classroom. So you wanna

Katie: 3:54

make sure it's easy for them to access and kind of easy to navigate from there. So I mean, the good thing about a physical classroom is you walk in and you can see everything laid out clearly, and you kind of know where, where you need to be. Yeah, well, when you're in a virtual space, it's not always as clear, especially for it like how you set up your LMS could make a really, really big difference. And so what you should do is kind of think of it from the perspective of a student. Log into your lms, go to your course homepage, and then, you know, take a look, say, Can my students easily navigate this? What are they going to have questions about? And how can I make this more accessible and easier for them to

Rachel: 4:36

understand? And one big thing that you can do right away is think about the navigation menu. It d again, it doesn't matter what LMS you're in, so if you're in Brightspace, it's your nav bar. If you're in Canvas, it's that side panel that you can go in and change. I don't know what it is in Schoology, cuz I don't really use Schoology, but I am sure that there is some sort of navigation menu that you can customize for yourself. So really what you wanna do is in Brightspace, for example, go in and create a custom nav bar and decide what links you want up on there. And really, I think my sort of general tip here is less is more.

Katie: 5:18

Yeah. Don't leave up all of the extras that you're never going to use, that will only cause more confusion. Cuz then students are like, what is this? And why do I never click on this? And, and is there a reason for it? Does this mean I have to know it? And it causes more stress and panic than necessary. So I know for me, I take away everything that I don't use. So I get rid of the Dropbox, I get rid of pretty much everything other than content class list, email, the teacher. Like things that I know that I need my students to use.

Rachel: 5:50

Yeah. And what I use, uh, has come down quite a bit over the years as well, and I, you know, because I've had lots of experience as an e-learning teacher, right? So I have a whole bunch of stuff that I used to do in the past, and I, I used to have a whole bunch of stuff in my nav bar, but now I'm kind of down to having a course home. Content grades, and then the edit course, which is for me, and I'm kind of playing around with the idea of like using the portfolio tool as, as we kind of go forward. Cuz I think there's some really kind of neat uses for that in terms of the stuff that, uh, um, I've been kind of working on like the modern classrooms project and the end grading stuff and, and things like that. But yeah, I would get rid of everything else and then I. What you wanna do is think about any of those, like other tools you use within your lms. Just link it all in the content area. I think most LMSs allow you to do that, so it's better for your students to be able to just click on one. Place and have everything in one place rather than having a bunch of different things that they need to click on in your navigation menu. And so

Katie: 7:02

on your homepage, I strongly recommend having some sort of, you know, contact information blurb where you kind of tell them your email address, maybe where your classroom is, your workroom or office, and just kind of lay that out so that if they do forget, it's an easy place to go back and say, oh, Great. This is where I can find Ms. Atwell or Dr. J. Awesome. Um, it just makes it easier for students. And then the other thing I would say is have some, some sort of announcements. So there's two options on Brightspace. So there's the newsfeed and the activity feed. And so use those. I use both of them for different purposes. I know some people, you know, limit it to just one of those. It's really up to you, but it's great to have a place to put any current announcements or things you really want students to be aware of.

Rachel: 7:49

Yeah, and you know what's funny is we recorded some Brightspace episodes last summer. We had a special guest on as well, and talked about a whole bunch of that Brightspace stuff, and at that point I was very, Much in Team Newsfeed. I would say this year though I am in Team Activity Feed. Nice. And it's changed and I think the reason it's changed is because, I don't know, it feels more natural in terms of like that flow of being able to talk and discuss and your students being able to add comments and reply on there as well. It feels very much more like the stream on Google Classroom. Than the newsfeed does. So I really like the activity feed and you know, you can even embed YouTube videos and stuff like that on there. So it's, it's actually pretty good and I really like it.

Katie: 8:41

I use them both, but I use them differently. So on my newsfeed, I do like the calendar. It was a quad. System. So I had the quad calendar up there and then any sort of like stuff that isn't going to change and you don't really need to comment on, so things I need you to see but you, you likely don't have questions about. I put that all there. But then sharing any sort of, Hey, this is what we're doing differently today for class or join this Google Meet link, or whatever the case may be. I would put on my activity

Rachel: 9:09

feed. See, I probably would set things up slightly different than you then. So like that static information that I need instead of sticking in a newsfeed post along with my contact information and all of that jazz, I would probably just create a custom widget. On my homepage that has that contact information and then has maybe a Google Slides embedded in there that I can update with, you know, just that important, like, here's this one sort of bit of news I need you to see, and I, I want it to always appear up at, you know, the top of the page. And so I would say like custom widgets are, are a good way to go in Brightspace. I don't know, I don't think they have an equivalent in Canvas. I've, I've used Canvas a little bit, but I haven't used it all that much. But I think you can. There is an announcements tool in there for sure. And I think you can also add a lot of stuff to your homepage. So you could probably do something similar in terms of format there. And it really

Katie: 10:09

comes down to whatever you're comfortable with. So play around with it, see what you like, and, and find a way that works for everyone essentially.

Rachel: 10:18

Now, if we keep going along the theme of organization. First. Then I think my next sort of big tip would be to embed whatever you can. So I kind of alluded to that a few seconds ago when I talked about embedding a Google Slides into a custom widget. But I would say in your content area, when you're structuring all of your resources in there, I know it scares a lot of people to u make use of the actual content pages within Brightspace, but. They're actually really great in terms of being able to embed stuff in there. So you could, you can embed anything that you can go get an embed code for. So you could embed an EDpuzzle video in there, or you could embed Google Slides in there, or you can embed a YouTube video or you can embed, like anything that gives you an embed code, you can stick within those content pages. And the reason I sort of suggest that is because you wanna keep your students in your LMS as much as you can. You don't want them navigating away to third party apps where they might get lost down the rabbit hole.

Katie: 11:22

And when you say embed, are you saying like create an HTML page within Brightspace and embed it there?

11:28

Yeah.

Rachel: 11:29

And my recommendation for going with an HTML page versus just linking in Google Docs, yes, it takes a bit more time cuz you have to create your resources. But the time is worth it because then things like screen readers are gonna be able to read that content so much easier than if you've got an embedded Google Doc. They would, the students would have to open that Google Doc in a separate window and then open up Google, read and write or use other extensions and stuff like that to get it to read. So that's part of the reason why I like it. And then, Also because yes, it, it's keeping them locked into that one place and then they can just click on stuff. It works. Then pretty much like any sort of webpage, I have enjoyed

Katie: 12:14

how convenient it is to just kind of insert a Google Doc and have it be able to be seen and whatnot right there versus creating the html and I think time this year was a huge factor. Now, perhaps with a little more time with the modified semester as. Is currently planned, it could be easier to navigate and figure out and get it all

Rachel: 12:34

done. Yeah, and, and, and that makes sense, right? If it makes more sense to just have it in a Google doc and it's a, it's a question of time and not having enough time to be able to put those resources together, like just throw your link to your Google Doc in there. It's better that your students have the content than to fiddle around and fuss around with your lms. But if you've got the time, Which as teachers we never do. But if you do have a little bit of time here and there, it's good to start to kind of build up those resources, especially for the courses that you tend to teach over and over again, cuz it will pay off in the long run. It's

Katie: 13:11

true. You then have a ready built resource that you can copy into a new course if you need to or want to. Yeah, no,

Rachel: 13:18

there is a lot to be said about that. And kind of going along with that too is as you're kind of putting your resources and different things into your content area, you wanna think about the structure of how you're putting stuff in there. So think about consistent naming conventions you're gonna use, or consistent numbering systems that you wanna use and stick with it. Students really, really. Benefit from consistency like that. And it actually helps to reduce that cognitive load for your students so that they don't have to think about, oh, where am I gonna go find this? And just kind of focus on the content. So as much as you can make that sort of seamless and in the background, that is really, really, really gonna help.

Katie: 14:01

And, and some of that is going to be a learning curve, especially if you're new to an lms. Like even me last year, like I think I started off with units, but then because of. The large time blocks, I found that I was kind of flipping between units to kind of help do a clear separation in our learning and make it easier. And so then I was like, this unit thing is not working anymore. And so then I was like, I think it's easier to do by weeks. And so by the end of the year I was doing like instead of doing units, I was doing week by week and showing a breakdown of what we were doing it that way, you really do have to figure out what works best for you and your students. And so that could even be something you ask your students about, like, what is easier for you to navigate? Is it easier for you to see what we did for that week? And for me to label it as such, is it easier for me to do it by units so that it's all there kind of content wise and it all links together? It all comes down to the type of course, course you're teaching and what works best for you and your

Rachel: 14:58

students. Yeah, for sure, and I used to, as an e-learning teacher, I would organize stuff still within units, which is fine, but then I would make sure at the beginning of every week, so every Monday, It was consistent, you know, right at eight o'clock in the morning, I would preschedule these newsfeed posts and it would list and say, here is what you should get done this week. A, B, C, D, E, and like really, really laying it out very clearly with clear suggested due dates too. So if you wanna keep it in units, that's fine, but maybe have a place in your activity feed or your newsfeed, or your announcements or whatever you have within your L M s. So that you've got some really clear messaging about the expectations. And

Katie: 15:45

I think one thing to also consider is how to involve your students. And I know it seems really backwards because we're so used to trying to prep ahead of time and plan and get it all done, but you'd be su. Pride, the difference that it makes when you involve students in that planning and in that organization in helping them to figure out what works

Rachel: 16:07

in the long term. Yeah. So survey your students, throw out a Google forum and just say like, Hey, we've got it set up this way this week. What do you like? What do you not like? What could we improve and get their input that way? That would be a really easy thing to do.

Katie: 16:22

And, um, include lots of visuals in your content. Find ways to make it look aesthetically pleasing, because I don't know about you, but when I'm taking a course, it's easy for me to follow along if I have visual cues that are consistent throughout the course and throughout the unit, because then it's almost like I'm, I'm drawing my eyes towards this and I'm like, oh, awesome. I know what this means. Next up, I'm gonna do this. So be consistent, but, but make it more aesthetically pleasing. And I know that sounds superficial, but it goes a long way to support students and keep

Rachel: 16:54

them on track. It does sound superficial, right? But making it look pretty, and this is sort of a big thing that I really, really love doing. It does serve a purpose. It increases student engagement because they're seeing something that looks visually appealing to them. So they're gonna be naturally kind of drawn to the page and looking at it. And then if you are really, really, I don't know what the right word is, but like really, really kind of aware of how you're designing things and being consistent in your design. Like Katie said, it can be used as visual cues then to be like, okay, this is. This kind of activity. So this is what's gonna be expected of me, so this is what I need to do. And having those visual cues, again, it reduces that cognitive load. And I think that's a big part of why students dislike an LMS or they dislike Brightspace or they dislike certain things about learning in that virtual space is because of inconsistencies. And you don't always notice those inconsistencies until someone kind of points them out to you and then you're like, oh yeah, okay. That's why that's bugging me and I don't understand. So making sure like all the fonts are the same and you're using, if you use emojis like you're using consistent emojis throughout the semester, like just really being aware of those design elements is gonna make a huge difference. And to be honest, I

Katie: 18:25

think that teachers feel the same way, I think because like, Some of these LMS systems are just so overwhelming and not as easy to kind of line up and put together quickly, because let's be honest, Brightspace takes time and you can make it look awesome, but it takes a lot of time and a lot of learning in order to be able to do that. And so I think that's part of the frustration on both ends for teachers and

Rachel: 18:50

students. Yeah, for sure. I would completely agree with that. You know, you even think about Brightspace and. When you first log into it, it depends on how your district has set up Brightspace. So if you go watch a YouTube video tutorial about Brightspace, that homepage is gonna look totally different than the one you see when you log in. And then you think about our students and every single course they have, their teachers are setting up their Brightspace core shells differently. So they have to relearn where everything is and, and that sort of, Piece again. And then if you add in inconsistencies on top of it in terms of the design, then that's when, yeah, that's when they start to complain and say like, Hey, like I don't understand where to find X, Y,

Katie: 19:38

Z. And I mean, part of it I get, but I also think that teachers are going to set it up differently because they have different courses and operate differently. So I'm not saying that teachers should be consistent across the board. I think it's more when you're setting it up, It's how you're explaining it to students and how you're involving them in the process so that it feels more natural for them and, and it is an inclusive space where they can open it up and say, I know this because we did

Rachel: 20:06

this together. I'm not saying that teachers should all set it up the same either, because like you said, everybody does have those individual needs, so do what's best for you. It's just thinking about. Being consistent within your own core shell, and then making sure you take the time. If you don't wanna take your class time in terms of explaining your LMS and your setup, create a video. Screencastify is a great tool, right? But go and just create a really quick walkthrough video of here is our l m s, here's how we're going to use it. Here's where you find stuff. And just doing that walkthrough where students can go back and reference that video if they need to. Like that's gonna make a big difference as well. Yeah. Most definitely. So I would say tools like Canva are gonna be absolutely invaluable to you as you're kind of setting up your L M s and thinking about design. So you could go into Canva and you can search for even just a header. And it'll come up with Google classroom headers, which are pretty decent in terms of the sizing for most LMSs. But I think you can also go in and search for Canvas specifically, which, yeah, so a canvas banner. Or a Canvas button and you could go in and pick one of those and that's gonna give you the perfect dimensions for Canvas. And you could go in and design your headers that way. They also have a whole category called Style your lms. Oh, perfect. Yes, I was looking for that, so thank you for that. Yeah, especially if you're on a Canva for Education account, then you'll find that whole category of styling your lms, and there's some really great stuff in there. So, Again, just like think about making sure whatever you design, pick the same colors, pick certain images that you use for certain types of tasks, keep the fonts consistent. Just sort of thinking about all of those things will make it seem like your class is really well organized.

Katie: 22:09

So many of us as educators, we wanna celebrate the different events and celebrations throughout the year and post, you know, little announcements. One thing I will say is it's important that you are looking up a whole variety of cultural celebrations and not just ones based on, you know, the dominant culture in your area. Uh, we wanna make sure that we have everyone represented in our classrooms and using a virtual space to kind of post about it and share and celebrate is. Great. Just make sure you're being inclusive of everybody in your

Rachel: 22:41

classroom. Yeah. And then again, with Canva, you could go in and design a little quick visual that you could post in your activity feed or your newsfeed or your announcements, wherever you want to, to have that sort of virtual celebration There. The

Katie: 22:55

other thing you can do with Canva, which is kind of fun, is you can incorporate your bitmoji. Yes. Which is kind of neat, and it's a great way to kind of add some personalization to your virtual space. So it's not just a bunch of words and images. They also see a little bit of your personality in who you are in a cartoon character.

Rachel: 23:15

Yeah. So if you don't know how to do that, if you are in a design in Canva, you just kind of wanna scroll down. If you don't see the Bitmoji, that's because you haven't linked your account yet. You're just gonna go to the more option has three dots. You click on that. There is an option for Bitmoji that you click on. It'll prompt you to sign in, and then you need to do that in there. There's also some other cool things, like there's Giphy. You can integrate G GFI gifts within your designs, which is kind of really nice too, because then you can add a bit of animation or funny stuff in there. And there's, there's some really neat tools in there. I

Katie: 23:51

think the goal really is, Make sure students know you're human. You know, you have a sense of humor. You, you have a life outside of school and you're not just this very black and white person in front of a classroom or in a virtual classroom. So yeah, add some

Rachel: 24:07

personality. You say that and I'm. I'm thinking about, you know, running into students outside of the classroom and they're always like shellshocked because they're like, oh my goodness. You know? And Dr. J actually has a life outside of school.

Katie: 24:20

Yeah, it's so true. They're like, what? My teacher goes out in public.

Rachel: 24:28

What they don't realize is we're kind of like shellshock to run into them too.

Katie: 24:32

Yes. It's like, oh man. What am I wearing? What do I look like? Do I look like a crazy parent right now? I know, right? But, uh, no, it's fun.

Rachel: 24:45

It's good fun. The other thing that you could do and you could consider if you wanna include student voice in your classroom is you don't have to be the one who designs your. Classroom banners, so maybe you get your students to design them, and then you can alternate and run through the different banners that they've designed at sort of regular intervals. So every student's featured over the course of the semester,

Katie: 25:11

and you can even get their input as. To cultural events that they celebrate and want to share with the class. You can let them design like a little thing that either explains it or just says, happy whatever, happy Eat, eat Mubarak, whatever they happen to celebrate, but you know, involve them because you'd be surprised how far that goes with them. That really does show that you care and that you're willing to kind of learn more and be flexible and share about a little bit about

Rachel: 25:39

who they are. And maybe kind of going along then with the last episode we talked about, where we talked about supporting our English language learners, maybe that banner you wanna include, say the word welcome, but you wanna include it in all the languages that are represented in your classroom. It would be really easy to get your students to write out welcome in their language or languages that they speak, and then include them all in a Canva design on. Your classroom

Katie: 26:05

banner or even like if you have a science class, why not put the word science mully throughout that banner? So have it in all of the different languages represented like that way. That's also one of those things where when they see it, they'll be like, oh, perfect. Cuz sometimes they may not always think in English. They may be thinking in their first language. So it kind of helps them

Rachel: 26:26

a little bit. I really like those ideas. But yeah, Canva's great. I've actually been pretty obsessed with it lately and I've been learning a whole bunch of stuff that you can do. So you can even create stop motion animations in there and maybe then, If your LMS supports it, you can create a banner that has some movement and stop motion animation in there as well. Nice. And yeah, so there's some really neat things you can do in Canva. I mean, I've kind of been obsessed. I didn't realize they had a content planner. So if you haven't seen the content planner and you like to make visuals for social media and kind of schedule them out, like that's a really cool tool. It's not, probably not super useful as like for the classroom, unless you're scheduling stuff out for that, which maybe you are. But, um, that, that's really cool and I've been learning a lot about that. And then learning about even creating like videos with Canva and, and stuff like that. There's some really neat things you can do with Canva if you dive deep in

Katie: 27:28

there. Nice. I didn't actually realize the

Rachel: 27:30

videos part. Yeah, and there's a really great YouTube channel that I've been pretty much binge watching for the past week or so. So I'll make sure that I grab the link for that YouTube channel. I can't, it's something like Create with Canva or so it's named something like that. I can't remember the name off the top of my head, but I'll make sure I link that in the show notes. So if you want to, you can binge, binge watch it too. That's awesome. Now we did talk a little bit about making it pretty, and I do have. I don't know if it's a scary recommendation.

Katie: 28:04

I like the way this is starting.

Rachel: 28:07

I am just gonna put this out there though, in that I think it's a super useful skill for teachers to learn a little bit of coding. And so I hope I haven't lost a bunch of you yet. Stick with me. But learning a little bit of basic html, so that's the codes that gets, basically does all the markup behind a webpage and then learning c, a little bit of css. So that is the sort of look. And feel of your webpages. And those two things kind of work hand in hand. But I would say learning a little bit of both of those goes a long, long way, especially when you're working in a learning management system like Brightspace. Or Canvas because you can get into that H T M L page and the code. So if something's not working properly, you can actually troubleshoot it and fix it. Or if it's not looking the way you want it to look and you wanna tweak it, you can.

Katie: 29:10

That definitely sounds scary.

Rachel: 29:14

It does sound scary. It's not as bad as you think it is though, especially because, Like, I wouldn't call myself an expert by any means in terms of this stuff, especially CSS because that's something that I've just kind of been dabbling in over the past couple years. But I know enough to get by and I know enough to go, okay, I wanna do this thing. So I, I Google it. You'll find lots of examples out there of full, full code that people have written that you can just copy and paste into your lms. So I guess you don't necessarily need to be able to speak the language. You need to be able to decode it and decipher sort of what's written and how you might manipulate that. So yeah, it's, it's a little scary sounding, but I think a little bit of that sort of coding goes a really long way in an L M s. Yeah,

Katie: 30:07

and, and, and it does sound like coding is the way that we are moving towards, especially in education. It's certainly an area that intrigues and interests me, but it also overwhelms and scares me all at once.

Rachel: 30:23

It does for me too, and I've. Dabbled in a whole bunch of stuff. So I really like web design and I've been trying to like gear my learning then around HTML and css and then also the coding language Java script, which, oh my goodness, like if you know Java script like that would be so, so useful because Google app scripts run off of a form of JavaScripts. So if you can understand JavaScript, you can script stuff in Google apps and that is. If you haven't seen some stuff out there in terms of what you could do, like that is really, really valuable knowledge to have. I am terrible at it, but that, that's sort of my goal is to, to learn some of that stuff. But it is, it is just so, so useful and. Some of that that's not that bad to learn. Like I think those things are the easier sort of pieces of coding to learn versus going into like the full on, like I wouldn't know what I was looking at if I was looking at other coding languages, but yeah, so there's some really good resources out there if you wanna kind of learn a little bit and go along. With it. I would say the one that I've probably learned the most from is Code Academy, and so I'll make sure we get a link to that in our show notes. But they have like beginner stuff. And then what's really neat about that program is it gives you the instructions and tells you a bit of information and then it gives you a panel where you can type stuff in, and then a third panel, which shows you what happens when you type that in. So it's very. Hands-on kind of learning, which is super

Katie: 32:00

useful. Very cool. And so when you do some of this coding stuff, how do you feel it is beneficial in an lms? Like what can you do with it?

Rachel: 32:09

So the one thing that I've kind of realized with Brightspace, and this has been some of my learning, even this summer because I'm working on some resources in there for teachers, is I didn't know I could code in buttons. Oh. And added navigation buttons. And so like that's how you did that? Yes. That's how I, I was showing Katie earlier what this button that I created that I'm so proud of that took me, I, I don't even wanna tell you how long that took me to figure out. But yeah, like you, you can, like, if you can add in extra elements that are not necessarily ready, readily available within Brightspace or within your lms, if you know some of the code. Gotcha. And so things like navigation buttons, like that's gonna, for a student feel a lot more like a webpage. So they're gonna, it's, it's just gonna be a little bit easier for them to navigate cuz they know if they see a big button, like click on that and. It just, again, it goes back to making things as streamlined as you can. That makes

Katie: 33:15

sense. So it adds more personalization and customization to your l m s page

Rachel: 33:21

essentially. Yeah, and so the summertime is it's a great time to kind of learn and play with those sort of things cuz there's no kind of time pressure. And if you've got the time during the school year to add them in, then you add them in. And if you don't, it's okay. It's again, it's another one of those like just extra sort of added things that can really improve your L M s but are not

Katie: 33:43

essential. Yes. And I think that's the big thing. So any suggestions we're giving, I mean, you have to do what you can. You can't create time and sometimes you may not be able to do all of these suggestions or any of them really. I. Get that entirely, and there's no pressure. These are just kind of, here are some things to keep in mind so that maybe as you're adding to your content throughout the year, you can add some consistency. You can make it a little safer and inclusive for students so that it's easier for them to learn in that

Rachel: 34:15

space. Yeah, so I'm, I'm sort of thinking. With some of the H T M L and the c s s stuff is once I kind of figure it out on my own and, and know how to do it, then I'm gonna create some instructional videos for staff. So if they want to try it out, they can. And if they don't want to, that's okay. But you know, just kind of going here, like, here's the code, just copy and paste it, throw it in your lms like, I've already done all the back work for you. You know, I sort of see that as part of my role as a coach in our school board. So. Yep.

Katie: 34:47

That makes sense. I think my last piece of advice, and it's gonna seem really obvious, is just using student friendly language. I think sometimes we operate in ed, you speak and curriculum talk and higher level kind of academic language, and I think it's important that we remember. The students we're interacting with are teenagers. You know, they haven't been through university, they haven't done a Master's or a PhD, or any of these things. So really make sure that the language that you're using is accessible to every single one of your students, because that's really gonna make a huge difference.

Rachel: 35:25

For all of them. Yeah, it's almost like writing a blog post, right? Yeah. You don't write it in academic language, you write it in language that's conversational and easy to understand. So if you kinda take that perspective in terms of the information you're posting in your L M S, I think that's gonna go a long way.

Katie: 35:43

And it doesn't really matter if it's. Applied academic open university college mix. The level doesn't matter. You know, at the end of the day, they're all teenagers and they are navigating different LMS platforms and, and courses and they, they just need to be able to understand what they're reading. Yeah. So that's my kind of last piece of advice, I think.

Rachel: 36:06

I think that's a great one to wrap our conversation up with. So we will make sure that we include any of the links and resources that we talked about here today in our show notes, and you can access our show notes for this episode@edals.com slash 56. That's edu G A L s. Dot com slash 56.

Katie: 36:29

And if you think that a friend or colleague would benefit from this episode, then please feel free to share it with them. And don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app so that you don't miss out on any future

Rachel: 36:40

content. And as always, we would love to hear from you. So if you have any suggestions on how you are setting up your virtual learning space this year that we haven't talked about here today, Then let us know. You can go onto our Flipgrid at Ed ugas.com/flipgrid and leave us a message there, or you can leave us a message on our website@edugas.com.

Katie: 37:04

Thanks for listening and see you in two weeks. Thanks for listening to this episode of our edu Gals podcast. Show notes for this episode are available@edugals.com. That's E D U G A L s.com. We'd also love to hear your feedback, so leave us a message on our website

Rachel: 37:30

and if you enjoyed what you heard, please subscribe and consider leaving a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. Until next time. Keep being awesome and try something new.