Back It Up Before You Go-Go!

 

Back it up before you go, go! Don’t be sorry in the fall like a Yo-Yo. Don’t plan on going solo! We’ve got you covered! 

Are you winding down your school year? Grading those last assignments, cleaning out your classrooms from the piles of papers that have accumulated all year and making summer plans.

You have just one more thing you need to do before you can wipe your hands clean of this year: prepare Canvas! You do NOT want to lose all of the blood, sweat, and tears you have poured into developing the best Canvas course ever!! 

Many districts have Canvas courses set to conclude at the end of the school year. If you are in Keller, they are still there, so you can breathe a sigh of relief knowing your course is still there in the fall to copy. It will just be under Courses -- Past Enrollments.  However, some people still like to make sure their content is safe, so they export their course or copy it to a Sandbox course.

A Sandbox course is a manually created course you house in your dashboard without students. It is a great place to try new things and save all of the content you love to store when you’re not ready to push it to your courses. If you have never created a Sandbox course, on the right side of your dashboard, there is the option to “Start a New Course”.  Name it “Sandbox:” followed by the content area if you teach multiple courses. For example “Sandbox: English 4”, “Sandbox: English 3”, etc. 

Now you have a Sandbox course to copy your content into for safe keeping. To copy your content you will need to go to the course you would like to copy. Click on “Settings” and on the right side “Copy this Course”. 

It will ask you which course you would like to copy from and to. Then make sure to click “All Content”, Adjust events and due dates” and adjust dates to fit your needs. Then finally, “Create Course”. 

Now when you are bored this summer and your brain is rested and ready to start spinning ideas for the next school year, you can work in your Sandbox. When your classes are populated for the new year with students, simply copy over your Sandbox course to the populated course with students! 

Viola! You are ahead of the rest with a completely ready course! Well maybe with a few tweaks, but mostly done! Take another sigh of relief, sit back, and let Canvas do the hard work for you!