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By Aaron Patching; Canvassador and Strategic Lead at Kingsdon Secondary Scool
As a Design and Technology teacher, I am always looking for the perfect balance between, well, design and technology. Hence my love of the Micro Bit, coding, electronics and physical making, what’s not to love! (definitely an article for another time!). However, another tool that also fits this brief for me is Canva. A simple and intuitive online design tool that allows the teacher and their students to design, iterate and perfect various elements of their work. Not only this, but it’s completely free! Staff and students all get free premium education accounts, which means no school or student is denied access. I recently delivered a webinar for Canva specifically on how D&T teachers can get started using Canva straight away. In this article I will share some tips or ‘quick wins’ for using this powerful, free creative platform.
One of the first things that struck me about using Canva for teaching was its ability to bring real-time interaction into lessons, without having to use an outside service or add on. With built-in polls and quizzes, I can get instant insight into my students' understanding, making ‘Do Now’ activities or exit tickets in real time and giving me instant feedback to use straight away.
In this clip, I demonstrate how easily I can gauge prior learning or check for misconceptions by using a quick poll. In this example, I ask participants about their school settings and specialist areas. You can also imagine this as a question about tool use or manufacturing processes at the start of a lesson, to gauge how much students can recall from the previous session. Similarly, this approach can be used for low-stakes assessments like exit tickets or end-of-topic tests. The quiz function, with its simple 'submit' button, encourages active participation and quickly gives me a breakdown of both individual and class performance without any extra fuss. Most importantly, it is all right there, embedded in my presentation, including the results for future reference, which allows me to focus on teaching rather than overcoming tech hurdles.
Canva can also change how students approach and organise their design thinking. Traditional mood boards can often become static collages that don’t always have the impact the creator intended. However, with Canva, you can include a more multi-media and interactive approach that truly inspires. My students’ mood boards are no longer just pictures on a page. They're dynamic visual narratives where image selection, location and hierarchy, are much more purposeful. I showcased a fantastic example from one of my year 9 students, highlighting how they now thematically group their ideas and can even embed videos to demonstrate ideas and concepts. One simple tool that makes a huge impact is the background remover, a personal favourite of mine (genuinely the best I’ve used) for creating clean, professional layouts. Whilst this just a simple trick, it’s also an introduction to digital layering and composition, both crucial skills for any designer, all while keeping their work visually appealing and easy to manage.
The future of design is now arguably intertwined with Artificial Intelligence, and Canva is leading the way in not only making this accessible for all students but also promoting age appropriate and responsible use. Canva’s "Magic Media" AI image generator is a game changer for initial ideation. In this clip, I demonstrate how you can feed a simple text prompt – like "tape dispenser in an art deco style" and immediately generate a range of visual concepts. This sparks fantastic discussions in class about design styles, material suitability, and even whether the AI's output truly aligns with the brief. It’s a great starting point for creative thinking and helps students overcome initial design blocks. finally, it also gives teachers the opportunity to directly teach these new pivotal AI skills and start the conversation around when or why you would use AI in the design process.
Perhaps one of the most impactful applications for D&T, particularly for assessment is Canva's ability to manage digital portfolios and templates. It is completely possible for teachers to move entirely to digital portfolios all on the one platform because of the ease with which students can develop and submit their work. I presented an example of a "Desk Organiser Template" that I’ve set up for my students, pre-formatted to guide them through their design journey. The intuitive drag-and-drop functionality means students can effortlessly populate their portfolios with text, effects and images of their research, prototypes, and final designs. The real magic, however, lies in the assignment feature. You can assign a unique, editable copy of a template to each student or group directly through either Canva, Teams or Classroom and they can hand it back to for live progress checks and feedback.
Canva allows you to easily create and publish your own websites, meaning any student, anywhere, with any device can access your content and resources because, if you can make a presentation with Canva, you can make a Canva site! Canva’s functionality allows you to convert any design into a live interactive resource website. In the webinar I share a live website I built for my Year 7s, which houses their homework assignments, embedded educational videos, and interactive quizzes. The beauty of this is its inherently accessible and inclusive whether students are using a phone, tablet, or computer at home, the website scales perfectly, removing potential barriers to learning. Taking this a step further, the introduction of Canva Code is a genuinely exciting new feature which allows you to create any idea you have for a resource and make it a reality. For instance, I created a "DT Randomiser" which is essentially a one-arm bandit for design challenges! Which I was able to generate with one simple text prompt. Meaning you don’t have to have any coding knowledge or understanding of languages to build bespoke revision quizzes or ideation tools tailored precisely to your curriculum needs AND be able to share it on your own website.
Whilst most of these features are available from other digital tools/ services and they may not appear revolutionary on their own (except Canva Code), I cannot think of any other that brings all of these features and many more all together into one easily accessible cloud-based platform and is free to all in education. So, if you haven’t already, get your account set up, work your way through the Teachers Essentials Course and give it ago.
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