Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Creating with Canva

I'm all about free online creation tools.  One of my favorites is Canva.  I've used it in the past to create signs or posters for various school events or to even create something new for my Facebook or Twitter profile.

Using Canva is totally easy -- you just create a free online account and start using backgrounds, text options, colors and styles to make a really attractive image that can be downloaded for printing or shared online.  There are tons of free fonts, colors, textures, and layouts -- but there are also a ton that you can pay a small fee to use.  Honestly, I have never done that -- and have never really felt that I was limited in what I could create by only using the free stuff.

We are working on some small group coding lessons, and I need to have some easy-to-learn (and fun) lessons for kids to do when they aren't with me doing the programming lessons.  I was looking around my room for inspiration on what to have them do -- and I actually saw it.  A poster.  An INSPIRATIONAL poster.  You know what I mean -- we all have them in our classrooms.  FYI - Pinterest is full of them!  I grabbed a couple of screen shots of some really nice ones to give the kids an idea of what I was looking for and threw them into a Google presentation.  I knew right away that using Canva to create some inspirational posters would be a fun activity for kids to do while they are waiting to move into the programming/coding group.

During class, I shared how to use Canva and really emphasized that they can ONLY use the free options.  I then shared the inspirational pieces I found on Pinterest and encouraged them to do a little online research of their own for some "inspirational quotes." They were off and running before I could finish the sentence, "Get to work!" The students really picked up using Canva quite quickly and turned out some nice work.  Many of them are hanging in my classroom!!  I know that I will be using Canva again soon with students.





















Have you used Canva?  I would love to hear about how and see some examples!


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