Canva

I use canva.com to make several kinds of materials for my classes, and I love this website! Canva is a platform you can use to create all kinds of digital resources, and very little design expertise is needed, even for those who feel less creative or artistic since there are tons of templates to choose from. It's super intuitive and easy to use, and it's free. This makes it ideal for students or teachers.

Canva can be used for student projects or presentations, making flyers for club or class announcements, making newsletters to send home to parents, or anything else you might need. As a teacher and as a student, I have already used it to make lots of different materials for my classes - everything from postcards, flyers, info-graphics, presentations, handouts, Instagram posts, and many other things.

Canva also helps students almost all of the 4Cs in the P21 Rainbow. Specifically, Creativity and Communication, but also Collaboration if the students work in groups. on their projects.

I definitely recommend this tech tool for educators to use in their classrooms!

Danielson Framework

Canva is a tool that relates very well to several domains of Danielson's Framework for teaching. Most easily seen in Domain 1 (Planning & Preparation), this tool helps teachers present content in ways that are developmentally appropriate for their students, since graphic organizers and pictures are shown to be powerful communication methods for children and adolescents. If the students are the ones using this tech tool, though, it connects to Domain 3 (Instruction) because it is a platform that allows them to engage content in a different way. If Canva is used to design materials to communicate with parents, it also connects to Domain 4 (Professional Responsibilities). [1a, 1b, 1e, 3c, 4c]

ISTE Standards

This tech tool also integrates some of the ISTE Standards for students into the classroom as well. If the students use Canva to complete assignments like make a graphic organizer or poster, they are engaging with content in creative ways and producing their own work, meeting Standards 4 (Innovative Designer) and 6 (Creative Communicator). With Canva, students learn to communicate through a more visual medium instead of written or spoken language, which is a much needed skill in today's workplaces. Additionally, if students work in groups to complete these projects, they also fulfill Standard 7 (Global Collaborator). [4a, 6a, 6b, 6c, 6d, 7b, 7c]