CANVA

Description of the tool

Canva is a platform that allows users to design social media graphics, presentations, posters, and other visual contents.
It can be also used for educational purposes since it enables educators to set up their classroom space, invite students, and manage lessons, activities, or projects, all in one place.
As it makes it possible not only for students to design projects with easy-to-use-design features and submit completed work but also for teachers to collaborate with students, share a post with the whole class, and provide feedback for assignments.
Canva presents an interactive and immersive teaching and learning environment. Besides, it is compatible with other educational platforms such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and Google Classroom, so signing up doesn’t mean giving up processes created and streamlined elsewhere.

In order to access the website, first, sign up to Canva with your school email account. Then, head to Canva for Education, read up on all the features and tools available, before scrolling to the bottom and registering, using relevant details about you and your teaching role. You should hear back from a Canva team member within 24 hours and once you’re approved, you’re ready and raring to go. Once you’ve been accepted to Canva for Education, you can begin adding students to your virtual classroom.

After you’ve chosen your Canva template and customized it to your specifications, it’s time to pass it to your students. Click the ‘publish’ button in the top right-hand corner and then, scroll down and select how you want to share it: it could be posted straight to Google Classroom, so students can instantly see what you’ve created.
If the work is relevant for some students but not all, it is possible to select a few to send a direct link. You can also download it as a PDF to show as an example of how you want them to structure their work in person, too. There are multiple possibilities, and all displayed under the publish button.
Canva offers a two-way dialogue, so students can ask direct questions of you about their work in order to clarify whether they’re on the right track and you can provide feedback accordingly. All you have to do is click somewhere relevant on the piece of work, then, an icon of a speech bubble with a plus sign will appear to the right. Click this, and then tag the person you want to direct the comment to, write your comment in the text field, then click ‘comment’. The recipient will receive a notification and can reply directly to this field. The main benefit of Canva is that educators and all their students can access this platform for free, with no limits on offerings or time.

Students can make use of Canva when asked to design various tasks including a leaflet, poster, Powerpoint presentations, video, story, newspaper, CV, etc. Since it integrates 60,000 templates, millions of images, thousands of font types and over 800,000 eye-catching illustrations and icons, it encourages students to do their best original work and build creativity in classrooms. Such projects could be designed particularly for portfolio tasks since students have longer time to demonstrate their creativity on a given topic/issue.

Additionally, Canva can be used for within-class group activities in order to practice what is introduced. In the pre stage of the lesson, the linguistic structure could be reviewed or a topic could be discussed. Students could be asked to design a poster including the target structure or reflecting their point of view for the corresponding topic. Their projects instantly become more exciting when created through Canva thanks to a wide range of templates, images, and icons.

In the final stage of the lesson, students can present their work through other platforms such as Padlet and Google Classroom and vote for the most creative design. In brief, Canva becomes the platform where imagination comes to life.