• Quick settings: You might have already figured out that you can access quick settings (including mute and Do Not Disturb!) by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, but you can actually customize it in iOS 11. To do that, go to Settings, Control Center, then Customize Controls.
• Widgets: If you have or are using an Android device, you may be familiar with these quick bites of information called widgets. Widgets are also available in iOS, by first swiping down to reveal the notifications, then left to reveal the widgets screen. Some apps that you use may come with a widget – check by swiping to the bottom fo the widgets screen, then Edit.
• “Right-clicking” on the iPad: While the iPad doesn’t have the nifty Force Touch feature that newer iPhones have, try to discover the of extra actions that maybe available to you by tapping and holding on an app or a toolbar icon. For example, you can press and hold on the Notability app icon to access recent documents.
• Single-app mode: By default, iOS presents only one app on the screen at a time. I’ve found this to be a productivity in that it helps me focus on only whatever I’m working on or reviewing at the moment, especially when used with Do Not Disturb.
• Master the dock: Once your iPad is unlocked, you are able to call it up any time by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. For me, I put (drag and drop) all of my most used apps directly on the dock, and other apps that I use frequently in a folder on the dock. The dock holds up to 15 apps (for 12.9” pro), including a special section on the right side for recently used app, suggested apps based on usage habits, and Handoff apps that lets you continue what you’re currently working on on other Apple devices.
• Multitasking: You can work with two apps at the same time on the iPad – notice that all apps support multitasking. There are two multitasking modes: slide over and split view.
  • To put an app in slide over mode, first swipe up from the bottom to call up the dock, press and briefly hold on an app icon, drag it onto the screen so it shows a rectangular outline, then let go. Slide overs float on top of the main app that’s open, and can be put either on the left or right side of the screen. You can even hide your slide over app by swiping it into the left or the right side of the screen, then call it back out by doing the opposite.
  • To put an app in split view mode, you would follow the same steps above, but before letting go, you would hover the app outline over the left or right side of the screen until the main app shrinks, then let go to put the second app in place. You can add a third app in slide over mode when you have two apps on the screen, but you would not be able to interact with them.
• Spaces: When you use split view multitasking, you are essentially creating workspaces that you can quickly switch to and from. For example, if you are writing a paper and you’ve already collected references, you may create a workspace with Word and OneNote; if you are taking notes while watching lecture capture, you may create instead a workspace with Safari and Notability … with some captures, you may even be able to open the video in Picture in Picture mode!
• Your apps work together: there are a couple features that iOS provides that lets your apps work together, including: 1) share sheet functionality that we talked about during orientation, which lets you send content from one app to another (for example, the Safari Apps lets you save a webpage as PDF using the share sheet); 2) file organization and usage through the Files app and the file picker, including sources such as offline, iCloud, and BuckeyeBox storage; and 3) as of iOS 11, you are now able to drag and drop content between apps that support it. We plan to write more about workflows in future updates.
  • Speaking of iCloud, we STRONGLY encourage that you backup your iPad to iCloud and turn on iCloud Backup – you would be glad that you did in the worst case scenarios that you lose your iPad, or your iPad becomes nonfunctional. You can do so by going to Settings, tap you profile at the top of the list (or sign in), then iCloud.
• One last bonus – take a screenshot then annotate: if your courses assign videos for you to review, you can take a screenshot a desired frame of the video by pressing the Home and the Power buttons simultaneously, or by pressing Cmd-Shift-3 (for whole screen) or Cmd-Shift-4 (for part of the screen) on the keyboard. Once you have taken a screenshot, a preview of it will show on your screen, which you can then annotate using, for example, your stylus. When you are done annotating, use the Done button to either delete or save the screenshot to your Photos, or use the share sheet to forward it on.

The Canvas Student app for mobile/tablet is great for viewing or interacting with your courses on-the-go. Using the app rather than the website on a mobile device also means you can take advantage of platform features, such as push notifications and Slide Over multitasking on the iPad. The Canvas Student app is regularly updated by the vendor with new features and bug fixes – the latest version is 6.0 on both iOS and Android.

Here are some features in the Canvas Student app that we like:

General Functionality

• Tucked inside the hamburger menu (top left), you can go to Settings –> Landing Page to change what screen you would like to see first when you launch the Canvas Student app. Are you a timeline person? The Calendar tab may be best for you. Are you a list person? Then the To Do tab may be a better fit.
• (Initiated on web) On the Calendar Page on the Canvas web app, you can grab the calendar feed link (bottom right of page) and subscribe to it using a mobile calendar app, such as iOS’s built-in Calendar app (under Settings, Accounts & Passwords, Add Account, Other, then Add Subscribed Calendar).
• (Also available on web) On the Dashboard tab, did you know that you can change the courses that are shown to you and how they are shown? To show/hide courses, tap the “Edit” icon and select/unselect stars; by default, all of your current courses are shown. If you are a color-coding person, tap the settings icon (3 dots) on a course card to change its display color.
• The Notifications tab is handy in that it not only shows most of not all activities that take place within Carmen, including inbox messages, announcements, announced changes to course materials and activities, and discussion replies.
• If you are on a smartphone, the Inbox tool is very handy for sending quick messages to your instructors and/or classmates without needing to remember their OSU dot-number email addresses.

Functionality Inside Courses

• Want to review course content in full-screen? Use the double diagonal arrow button around the center of the screen to expand the content shown on the right side; by the way, the course navigation menu was freshly updated in version 6.0!
• Notetakers probably already know this trick, but when you open a PDF files that resides within a course, you can tap the edit icon (looks like pen and a writing surface) to reveal tools that you can use to annotate it without leaving the Canvas Student App! When you are done annotating, use the share icon (looks like a box with an arrow pointing up) to save or send the file to another app … with your annotations!
• Worrying about forgetting to take a quiz? On the information page of a quiz that is not past due, tap the alarm clock icon at the top right to schedule a notification for yourself.
  • While not all types of quizzes are currently supported by the app, it will prompt you to access the web app if and when needed.
• Speaking of quizzes, as of app version 3.20 on iOS, the Canvas Student app gained an iOS widget (the left-most screen on the home screen, or swipe down and left from the top of the screen) that shows you your current course grades.

We hope that some of the features that we listed above would be helpful for you with using the Canvas Student app more effectively. As a final bonus, if you are an Amazon Echo user … did you know that there is an Alexa Skill for checking what’s going in your courses? This blew our minds last July when it was announced and has become much more capable since then!

The iPad is a wonderful tool for learning in the classroom and on-the-go. There are plenty of free and paid apps, often used together in a workflow, that can potentially greatly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your learning.

For more information, check out this presentation we gave to the VME-I students as part of their orientation.