Canvas seems to contain all or most of the features needed to provide the environment necessary for my needs as an online instructor.

I like the way Curry embeds video introductions into the beginning of each unit, and I plan to do that also. My first question is: do we need to provide a transcript of these videos so that someone who can’t hear them (whether because of an impairment or equipment problems) can access their content?

A second question I have about video is that when I used Screencast-O-Matic for the blog in this course, I had to link to it, but Curry embeds the video in the lesson? Is this a feature of Canvas?

Curry also mentions using Zoom early in the semester to get to know students one-on-one. I like this idea, but I assume that this is outside Canvas and you simply send them a link.

Warnock’s lists include some of the following that are very important to me:

Quick interaction with a student: Course announcements and the built-in email currently meet my needs in my f2f class, but I think the addition of video from my end and an introductory video from the students will increase communication for an online course.

Readings and conversations around them:  I feel that the traditional discussion boards in Canvas have and will work well for that. This necessitates tracking who is participating and what is the quality of the postings/responses.

Workshop-like peer evaluation: I followed the link in this unit to Peer Mark, and it seems to be a tool that I would use in an online course because it allows for a guided peer review with I think is important.

Interaction with students about their writing: Besides the traditional written comments, Canvas’s built-in SpeedGrader provides audio and video capabilities for interacting with the student about their writing assignment, which would help students tremendously to improve their writing and feel committed to an online course.

Presentations: I use PowerPoints in my f2f class often since it provides a record of what’s been presented and allows students to go back and review the content. I checked out Prezi this week and could see how migrating to that might be useful.

Group projects: I use group projects for small in-class exercise’s and also for a collaborative writing assignment. Canvas also provides the ability to use Google docs that would work well in an online course.