Canva

Inspire creativity through intuitive graphic design

Canva provides teachers and students with a simple new way to design. Its drag and drop functionality enables them to create presentations, posters, one-page documents, and social media posts. With more than 1 million photos, icons, and layouts, students are empowered with a design tool that allows them to explore, engage, and innovate in new ways. Students can create designs to be shared with the entire class. They can provide view-only access or give classmates or their teacher an opportunity to collaborate on the same design.

Recommended audience:

Canva provides teachers and students with a simple new way to design presentations, posters, one-page documents, and social media posts. Canva makes it easy for teachers and students to create Infographics whuch can make complex information into an eye catching, shareable and easily digestible image.

Advantages:

Through the drag and drop functionality students can easily create presentations, posters, one-page documents, and social media posts.

With just one click students can access more than 1 million photos, icons, and layouts,allowing them to explore, engage, and innovate in creative new ways.

Students can create designs to be shared with the entire class with either view-only access or give classmates or their teacher an opportunity to collaborate on the same design.

Easy sign-in with Google Apps for Education means teachers can bring classes on-board quickly and efficiently, without having to worry about maintaining additional logins and passwords.

Additional design tools such as Photo Editor, Color Palette Generator, and Font Combinations extend the creative experience and provide even more refined design options for the advanced user.

Disadvantages:

Canva does not have an app for Android mobile devices but does support many browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox®, Internet Explorer®, or Safari®.

Budget:

Canva is FREE Basic individual level simple drag and drop editor.

Canva at Work is $12.95 per user/month provides collaboration, design and edit with your team and more customization for template, fonts and colors.

Training and Rollout

Onsite training for Canva is typically done with teachers during the planning sessions prior to introducing students to their project. An in-class introduction to Canva for students can also be provided. In the early fall, refresher sessions are offered as part of the Tech Tuesday after-school sessions. If your team would like a session conducted during your plan time, simply contact the technology integrator to schedule a date and time.

For those self starters, try this resource to get started:

Quick Guide to Canva go to: https://www.canva.com/design/DAA_TE8VRUk/X5wZy7k74KKA9w5du-kkQw/view

What’s Needed

Can access Canva using the Internet on a computer with any browser, such as Chrome, Firefox®, Internet Explorer®, or Safari®.
Canva is also available for iOS® mobile devices from the App Store.

Frequently Asked Questions FAQ

Do you need to download Canva? There’s no need to download or install anything to use Canva. Simply head over to www.canva.com to create an account and get started. Otherwise you can download Canva on your iPad, allowing you to create designs at home, at work or on the go!
What if I don't have any design skills? Canva’s drag-and-drop design tool is ridiculously easy to use. Choose from our library of thousands of professionally designed layouts and over 1 million stock images, graphics and illustrations.
How do I share my Inforgraphic from Canva? To share your amazing infographics with your friends and colleagues, simply click the “Share” button on the top right of the editor. This will allow you to share your design on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and more. You can also download it as an image.

Teaching Materials & Tutorials

Tutorials:

Help introduce visual literacy in the classroom with ideas from Canva's community of education experts.

https://designschool.canva.com/tutorials/?_ga=1.241858763.875725429.1492360541

Teaching Materials:

Visit Canva’s Design School for teaching materials, classroom lesson plans and more.

https://designschool.canva.com/teaching-materials/

For more information go to Articles and Resources section.

Lesson Ideas

Career Infographic

Students will create an infographic explaining key information about a specific career by...

Researching information by using correct keyword searches, finding reliable sources, analyzing the information and paraphrasing facts.
Composing graphical representations of text-based information.

More details can be found in the complete lesson plan by John Spencer

Part I: Exploring Ideal Careers

As a warmup, students to describe what kind of career they want to have when they grow up. Then in pairs, students will brainstorm questions they would want to know when choosing a job. Students then preview what an infographic looks like and analyze key characteristics.

Part II: Researching

Teacher models the research process for finding career information, then students work in small groups to do research and find facts using the same process modeled.

Part III: Creating an Infographic

Individually, students use Canva to create career infographics. They can use any of the facts that their small group has researched. Teacher reviews the Quick Guide to Canva.

Part IV: Publishing their Infographics

Students can print out the infographic and display career information for a Career Day or they can post the information online in a blog or on social media.

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Standards to be met:

ISTE 3. Knowledge Constructor: Students critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts and make meaningful learning experiences for themselves and others. (3a, 3b, 3c, 3d)

ISTE 6. Creative Communicator: Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals. (6a, 6b, 6c, 6d)

CCSS W.7.6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and link to and cite sources as well as to interact and collaborate with others, including linking to and citing sources.

CCSS W7.7. Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.

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