Creating User Friendly Online Course Pages

I wanted to share a thought from Mr. Winslow about generating and using buttons or icons as buttons in his Canvas course. If you are wanting a way to improve the navigation of content on course pages or make the interface a little more welcoming then you will want to use icon, images and buttons. 

For example, you might have seen these icons in our online pd courses:

    

 

Also here is another example to use a button generator found online. 

"Brad,

Here is the screenshot of a canvas page showing how I use buttons to hyperlink within a course. The buttons were created at buttongenerator.com and all you have to do is put an acknowledgement somewhere in the application or on a website, like I did at the bottom of this page.

I appreciate all your support!

Thanks,

Mr. Winslow

Chemistry/Physics Instructor

Instructional Leadership Team

NHS Sponsor

Senior Class Sponsor

Belton High School

​"​

Make your own buttons, headers and dividers. Springfield Public School has developed a nice resource with pre-populated images for headers, dividers and buttons. Check out their page and save the header images as needed or make your own using Google Drawing or PowerPoint.

​Canvas Buttons and Dividers​

#LearnForever​

Creating on the go

Some people think that it is impossible to use mobile devices to create and share on the fly. Some feel that our students today must have a desktop or laptop to type their school papers. While I have to agree that having a full keyboard and laptop work and is what we, adult learners, are more comfortable, I believe today's students are that much more capable to using mobile and smaller devices to accomplish the same tasks as before and extending to create new, never before accomplished tasks.

I remember when texting became a thing. I recall using my first Nokia phone as just a phone and to play Snake. I didn't think texting was worth the short bust I could send with my phone. Was it worth the amount of time it took to type a text message? Why not just call the person? You had to hit the 2 digit three times just to get the letter "C." Well along came the concept of T9 predictive text. After some time kids could send txt a using T9 without even looking. Kids can learn and maximize the tools.


I recently created s family video with a powerful message for my kids using my wife's new iPhone. We totally captured the footage, edited the videos, added the text and audio and published it for the world all in about an hours time.

In fact I am creating this post on my iPhone now. I'm able to type these paragraphs, format the document, and even embed the video. Something you can not do on a standard Micorsoft Word document. My point being, you, me students can create on mobile devices.