Canva

You may have heard of Canva, a popular web-based app for designing newsletters, presentations and other media. Newly arrived is Canva for Education, a specific version of the app made to allow teachers to share documents directly to their students as assignments.

ACCESS CANVA

ACCESS THE APP VIA THE WAFFLE

The Canva app shortcut can be found in the waffle (the icon you'll find next to your Google profile picture in just about any new Chrome tab).

KIDS HAVE ACCESS, TOO

Students can access Canva via the waffle just like teachers. But, for classrooms with younger students, you may want to add the Canva app to your teacher page in Clever:

Head to Clever, and open your teacher page
Click ADD
Click APP
Search for Canva
Click INSTALL CANVA

BROWSE THE HUGE LIBRARY OF TEMPLATES

Canva is all about marrying solid design and desktop publishing with ease of use. As such, they have a huge library of templates that you can use as right out of the gate.

You can browse the template library by category (there is a whole section for education) or you can search the library using a keyword.

Prepare yourself, because there are many, many options to choose from.

If you find a template you'd like to use, click the preview image and choose CUSTOMIZE THIS TEMPLATE.

WORKING WITH THE EDITOR

The Canva editor should feel rather familiar, as it works much like other digital design apps. When editing an existing template, any element on the template can be customized to your need. Just click to select, and then modify the font, size and color. Elements can be moved, rotated, and resized.

You can add new elements by selecting the category in the black toolbar on the extreme left of the screen. You can add images, text boxes, shapes, audio or video among other things. Each category holds a huge library of professionally designed content for your use, from animated shapes and objects to catchy background music.

MY FAVORITE EDITOR FEATURE

FAVORITE FEATURE ALERT!

When editing a design, any element that you add (shape, text, image, etc.) can be locked so it cannot be edited or removed! This is great when you're creating complicated designs or graphic organizers with lots of content kids could delete by accident.

ASSIGNING TEMPLATES TO STUDENTS

The "for education" part of Canva for Education refers to your ability to quickly and easily push designs as templates to students in your class via Google Classroom (or by creating an assignment from directly within Canva).

Any design, whether it be a premade available via the template gallery or a custom design of your own, can be used as an assignment. Just click the three dots in the upper right corner and find the "Assignment" button. It'll ask you where you'd like to push the assignment to, and give you other options depending on your destination.

MORE HELP FROM THE EXPERTS

Want to learn more about how Canva for Education can help you in your classroom?

There's no better place than the official website which has quick videos and tutorials to walk you through this easy-to-use tool.

You can find it here: Canva for Education - Learn

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