Canva is a ‘visual communication’ platform. Whatever you want to create – presentations, posters, videos, digital whiteboarding, newsletters, a teacher portal, marketing materials, or websites – Canva offers a really simple and attractive solution. 

•  You can log in to your new school-based Canva team with your school credentials at this link. There, you can use the full power of Canva for Education as well being able to work together with colleagues through real-time collaboration, sharing feedback and comments etc.

• If given the option - click sign in using work email and then click log in with SSO rather than adding a password.

•  If you are already a Canva user, the next time you log out and log back into Canva, you’ll be joined to the new school team. Your pre-existing content will be accessible by switching between teams; you can copy designs to your new school team by following these steps. Click here to log out of Canva to get started.

•  Please read the Canva teacher's guide, even if you've used Canva before - there are a few differences between our new organisation-wide version of Canva and versions you may have used in the past.

•    To learn more about using Canva to support your work, have a look at Canva’s general learning site (Canva Design School) or their Teacher Resources page for resources specific to pupils and teachers.

• Canva also has an equation editor for Maths and Science - instructions here

Ok, so Planet eStream is not exactly an app, but it can be used in a similar way and embedded in to firefly and Google Classroom pages. You can add content and browse elements included by other GDST teachers. If you're new to eStream, there is a helpful section in firefly to get you started here.

Many of us know about the flexibility Prezi offers as an alternative to powerpoint or google slides. There is now an additional function that allows you to record or present your prezi live on video. Have a look at the site for more info here.

James Earp writes: I am finding Poll Everywhere really good for being able to get everybody in the class to be able to contribute at once; I can set up an open question (perhaps to explain a particular point or to suggest reasons for what is going on in a photograph) and then they can all simultaneously type their answers, which will start to appear on my screen and then when I think they’ve had long enough to contribute we can go through and look at all the answers. It is anonymous which has both pros and cons (pro – they aren’t scared to respond; cons – did everybody participate; you don’t know and have to trust they did or get value out of seeing the answers). There are lots of options for questions (the word cloud is quite good too, but the free account is limited to 40 entries so factor that into your instructions). You can of course use the chat function in Google, but personally I am finding this better. There is a bit of learning to do in terms of how to use it so let me know if you want me to show you. 

It can be a bit tricky to get special characters into a Google doc, depending on the kind of device you are using. This is a free add on that you can quickly put in place to ease the pain - just download and follow the simple instructions to use!