Ten Things You Can Do With Canva in Your Classroom

Canva is a service that I have used for last five or six years to create all kinds of graphics, presentations, and simple websites. Recently, Canva introduced some new features and a new plan that grants access to all of Canva’s “pro” features for free to teachers and their students. You can get that plan by going to canva.com/education. Let’s take a look at ten things you can do with Canva in your classroom.

1. Create slideshows. You can mix and match any of templates and designs offered by Canva to create a presentation that you can then display from Canva or use as a PowerPoint file. This video shows you how to make a slideshow presentation in Canva.

2. Create videos. One of the newest features will turn the slides that you made in Canva into a short video presentation with just one click. Watch this video to see how it works.

3. Create a timeline. Mixed in amongst all of the templates that Canva offers you will find a select of timeline templates. It is possible to include images, links, and videos within the timelines that you create on Canva. Here’s a video on how to make a timeline in Canva.

4. Make a multimedia poster. All of Canva’s design templates support the inclusion of pictures, links, and video. Here’s an overview of how to make a multimedia poster in Canva.

5. Create greeting cards. Writing my name on little Valentine’s cards is one of my earliest elementary school memories. Depending on the age of your students you might design and print some cards for them to write on by hand or you might have them create print their own cards. This video will show you how to make cards on Canva.

6. Create printable certificates. If you need to quickly design certificates for things like honor roll or perfect attendance, Canva has you covered. This video shows you how to make certificates on Canva.

7. Remove image backgrounds. One of the relatively new features in Canva is an “effects” menu. In there you’ll find a tool for removing the background from any image with just one click. Once the background is removed you can layer your new image onto a new background. By doing this students could virtually place themselves in front of any landmark in the world.

8. Make interactive images and diagrams. By using the hyperlinking tool in Canva’s design editor students can make hyperlinked diagrams.

9. Create simple webpages. Canva lets you publish your designs as simple stand-alone webpages. As is demonstrated in the following video this could be good way for students to create and publish simple visual stories.

10. Create social media graphics. Of course, the original purpose of Canva was to help people quickly create great looking social media graphics. Use the templates to make a graphics to advertise your school events on Instagram, Facebook, or anywhere else that you want to make your message stand out.