Creating Content with EdTech – Similarities with User Interfaces and Toolbars Make it Easy to Create Content as Seen on Canvas, Google, & Microsoft

By: Matt Rhoads, Ed.D

Dr. Matt Rhoads is a Tech and Instructional Leader and Innovator with hands in Adult Ed, K-12, and Higher Education. He is the author of several books and is the host of Navigating Education – The Podcast.

Creating content on Canvas is very similar to creating content on Word or Google Docs. Many of you know to use the content toolbar to write and create content on a Word Processor. Essentially, it is very similar on Canvas! The goal is to show you the various similarities each tool uses to create content, which many of us are familiar with. This helps us with the ease of use of the EdTech tools we utilize to create content for our classroom instruction as many are very similar.

It’s all about the content creation toolbar. Let’s see some comparisons below between Word, Google Docs, and Canvas. 

Microsoft Word Content Creation Toolbar

Google Doc Content Creation Toolbar

Canvas Content Creation Toolbar

Using this content creation toolbar, you can create pages and assignments on Canvas, which are the two of the main mechanisms you can use to create instructional content for your students. The content creation toolbar does not change throughout your use of Canvas. Ultimately, the options that change are the additional content you want to add when uploading assignments through either a file or the Google LTI integration (using a document or slideshow previously made and uploading from Google Drive). Keeping the content creation tool the same on Canvas allows you to easily transition from doing various actions on the learning management system, which ultimately helps with learning the platform and its ease of use. 

Final Thoughts – Creating Content is Very Similar Across Platforms

Overall, creating content across platforms can be done in very similar ways. There may be a few steps that it takes us to open these various tools, but once we are creating the content, the toolbars have many of the same options we can choose from to create the content. I recommend taking some time to dabble and play with the content creator toolbars on Canvas. You can do just as much as you can on Google Docs and Microsoft Word, which is amazing! The more time you spend, the better you will get building out the content for your classes. Over time, you become much faster in creating the content as you are using the tool more often. 

In my experience, much of the technology we use in education has many of the same functions to create content we can use to amplify our instruction and student learning. Once you know how to use one or three content creation toolbar interfaces, you know how to create content on ten to twenty different tools. Hopefully, by looking at these various content creation toolbars shows a brief preview of this pattern we see with EdTech tools we can use in our classrooms to amplify our instruction, content, and student learning!

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