Canva for Education
Earlier this year I almost bought Canva Pro because I wanted to have more storage and use the pro features. I put it off, because I found a quick and free video editor, and I just settled for this temporary solution. I have been working with Canva since it was just a poster-and-business-card-design platform. I’ve seen it grow big and bigger, and then it exploded in the ionosphere: Canva for Education was launched. However, it was obviously not a very public event because I only found out about it a few weeks ago!
I can create designs in Adobe Illustrator, and I often design booklets in InDesign, but Canva has been my go-to space whenever I need a quick and easy graphic, images for videos, or a template if I didn’t have a clear vision and starting from zero would just slow me down. More often than not, the final outcome would be completely different from the initial template.
In the classroom, I would always insist that my students do their presentations or brochures in Canva, and all of them who did found it extremely easy, intuitive, and managed to create high quality designs. And then, I stumbled upon the holy grail: Canva for Education.
The potentials are vast: it may seem at first that Canva would mainly be used by art teachers, but the fact that the elements bank is extremely versatile, it can be used for History, Geography, Science, Biology, Math, to name the few. Naturally, teaching English with the help of Canva is easy and simplified to the most important features: sharing, collaboration, and feedback.
Sharing
Once your account application is approved, you can create your classrooms. Each class has its own designs and space. If you create a design in one classroom, you will have to share the editable link to yourself in the other classroom. This is the only tricky situation about having more than one classroom. You can create folders in classrooms, set up your colors and branding, too. The students have the same power: they can have their own private designs, or they can share those with any specific classmate or the whole class. There are two levels of sharing: view or edit.
Sharing does not happen only in Canva, but across all major social media platforms as well as email, Google drive, Dropbox, and the like. The simplest way to share is by just copying the link, again either editable or to view: just like google docs, slides and sheets. On top of that, I can embed the designs to my website, here on Medium (smart embed), or Canvas rich content editor.
Collaboration
Within the classroom, I created groups for students who are working on the same project, either in pairs or small groups. It’s easier for them to share the design that way, and they can work on the same design at the same time from two devices.
Feedback
The teacher assigns a template to the whole class or particular student(s)/group(s). The students can use templates or start from scratch, just like in the ‘regular’ Canva. Once they finalize the design, they submit it to the teacher for review. I get an email as soon as a student has submitted a design, and there’s a red dot on the notifications bell in my Canva navigation. Then, I can give comments on each element in the design (text box, elements, images,…) and I can leave the comments in the feedback box. Once I am happy, I ‘return’ the design, which means the student needn’t work on it any more — it’s ready to present to class. There is the third way of giving feedback to students: adding a text box to their design, or adding a page and typing it there. This is probably more effective because the student will receive the email with the design embedded in it. They will then clearly see the teacher’s notes on their design. Going back to their design, they can easily delete the text box or whatever the teacher added.
I still have to test how it would work to assign my existing worksheets to a class. I will try to just paste the image as a background, lock it and let students type their answers freely. The only drawback of this platform is that there is no (automatic) grading system, like in the Google Classroom. However, I can already sense an idea germinating to create a personal grading sheet, shared with each student, and being updated manually after each assignment is handed in. Perhaps the absence of grading makes Canva friendlier and more focused on designs and creative process, while the grading is actually done in Canvas, for example. Of course, you can integrate your Canva for Education as an external App in Canvas.
The only complaint I have about Canva for Education is the absence of tutorials. There are a lot of ‘how to design’ tutorials, but the Education version-specific are lacking. There is a ‘course’ i.e. six 2 min videos on how to incorporate Canva in class, but it’s too general and probably intends to cover too wide an area of methodology, so in the end it doesn’t achieve much. There are no tutorials explaining what I have explained in this article, so the teachers who are new to Canva would get lost in the humongous space of Canva designs and options. Mastering the classroom features, the tricks of sharing and giving feedback would contribute to the feeling of overwhelm. Some teachers are not good learners, and they need a lot of time to start using a new tool. Some teachers need clear instructions and guided training before they venture into new platforms. Some teachers are afraid of ‘clicking away until tomorrow’ and they just cannot learn by trial and error. I am sure that this Ed Tech revolution that swept us all last year has not been kind to those teachers, and I am worried that they don’t stand a chance against the change. I hope Canva for Education will be a good solution for those teachers who do not feel creative or capable of handling complicated platforms like Canvas or Classcraft. I am so grateful I got access to it and even though it’s been a couple of weeks, my students are already doing great work. The tough part of the job is teaching it to the teachers. Wish me luck!
