Canva for Education: Must-Have Ideas for Teachers
Canva is more impressive than ever, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be more complex or more intimidating than ever. These days, there is so much you can do in this powerful tool that you probably don’t even know of all the ways you could be using it. Canva for education can change your classroom one design at a time.
I caught up with Leena Marie, The Edtech Guru, from Canva for Education in a podcast episode to get to know what is so unique about this online tool for teachers. Check out the interview!
So, really, what is so great about Canva? Well, there’s too much for me to share here. However, I created an entire module in educators2educators for members to exclusively learn all the ins and outs and get the most from this asset. If you’re not a member, now is definitely the time to sign up for a free trial (no credit card information required)!
What I can share with you are a few ways you probably didn’t know you could use Canva as a teacher.
Canva for Learning Games
Hidden in Canva is a number of fun games and activities! These make for perfect brain breaks, lesson supplements, or just time killers in your schedule. You can use these as-is and update the information as needed, or you can completely customize them to suit your class.
Games for Students
Until recently, I had no ideas games like this existed. And they’re amazing. Starting with a slideshow design, or really any of your choosing, you can create interactive activities for your students. Your mind probably went straight to trivia games, like this adorable one, but there are so many more pre-made options at your disposal!
One of my personal favorites has to be this emoji proverbs guessing game! Or this similar game for compound words. In both, students have to guess the word or phrase the emojis create when combined.
I also like this game for teaching positive and negative behavior. This is such a great example of how easily you can gamify a simple topic and make it an engaging teaching opportunity.
Fun Student Printables
Teachers Pay Teachers is a great hub for printables, and you’re supporting teachers at the same time. It’s a great concept! But you don’t always (or ever) want to spend your own money on activities, so why not create them yourself for free?
Making a coloring page can be as easy as creating a document-sized design, adding a graphic or two, changing the colors to make it a white image with black outlines, and printing it.
These aren’t just for the little ones! There are plenty of printables that work for middle and high school students, too. There are some stunning adult coloring pages with wonderful affirmations, like this one, or study planners to help get your students organized, like this one.
Canva for Student Collaboration
Canva for education offers so many opportunities for fun, interactive student collaboration. Any of the games and ideas above work for small groups and other activities, but Canva is great for assignments, too. Here are a couple of ideas to get you started.
Working in Docs
I am so excited for this new feature! Canva Docs is just like Google Docs, but the design capabilities are phenomenal.
Docs are a great way for students to collaborate by taking notes together and creating visuals to accompany them. Here they can make comments to ask questions and answer them amongst themselves to have a helpful document for test or exam studying.
The most exciting feature of this tool is the Magic Write function. Here, students can type in a question or command and Canva will create a full response. This is perfect for brainstorming and idea creation. For example, if a student were struggling to come up with a presentation on a favorite historical figure but knew they wanted to feature someone in sustainability, they could type in “10 historical figures in sustainability.” They’d then get a list of 10 people who had large impacts in the field and a little bit about what they did. I bet you wish you had this tool when you were in school, right?
Docs are also great for project planning! Sometimes group projects can get a little messy, so students can use a Canva Doc to create spreadsheets, tables, to-do lists, timelines, anything they could need to stay organized.
Whiteboards
Just like Docs, Whiteboards are an amazing evolution of Canva. There are so many amazing opportunities for whole-class and small-group collaboration! And the best part about this tool is that it’s something students would realistically use in a workplace setting, so they’re gaining real-world experience in the classroom.
I found a K-W-L chart template that I loved, but I wanted to jazz it up a bit before sharing it out to you all. I’m also a fan of this project journey visualization to help students set goals and see the process of achieving them.
Voiceovers on Slides
It’s incredible how many amazing slides templates exist in Canva. Do your students have a presentation on their history lesson? Suggest this artistic slideshow. Are they presenting on a Shakespeare play? Here’s an amazing slide deck they can use.
One great tool in this design is being able to record over the slides. This can be done one of two ways.
The first way is pre-recording the speaker and uploading the MP4 files to Canva. Students can then drag the files to the appropriate audio file to the correct slide then lower the transparency so only a play button shows and can be clicked when ready. This method is perfect if using school computers that don’t have microphones.
The second way requires recording capabilities on the device. Once all of the slides are completed, students could select “present” in the upper right-hand corner. Then students will simply record themselves speaking over each slide.
Canva for Teacher Organization
An organized teacher is a happy teacher. And it’s even better if it’s visually appealing. With Canva, you can seamlessly tuck away all of your files, creations, and ideas in docs and folders. You’ll never lose a behavior documentation sheet again!
Docs for Teachers
Like for students, teachers can use Docs to keep all of their thoughts in one place, creatively. These Docs are great for all of your endless documentation you’re required to do and can help you visualize progress with tables and charts.
Printables and Designs for You
While there are tons of designs that are helpful student and teaching resources, there are just as many beautiful design possibilities for you! Easily and quickly create lesson plans, to-do lists, documentation sheets, and so much more by adapting a template or starting from scratch.
In the search bar, try looking for keywords like teacher schedule or personal planner. There are even templates for substitute teacher planning packets and parent-teacher conference notes.
If you’re a fan of planning, check out this Canva tutorial on creating class schedules.
Organization System
Canva is evolving into an organization system much like Google Drive to help you keep track of all your gorgeous designs and files. I like to create folders by project and then nest folders by year or semester, theme, lesson, etc.
I also recommend favoriting folders you use regularly for easy access. My projects and folders sections can get a bit cluttered, so this helps speed up my work.
One last tip here is to not forget to share your work with coworkers! In Canva, you can collaborate with other teachers to share pieces you’ve created or chat in docs. This can save you all some time by reusing materials.
Case Studies for Ideas
So many schools and classrooms are using Canva now, and for so many reasons. Thankfully, Canva has started to collect some top case studies to let us know what’s working for others and how we can replicate it.
Touching back on student collaboration, you can read how George Lee, a high school teacher, used Canva during remote learning to keep his students engaged and interacting with the content. There are even some great ideas for in-the-classroom tech use!
Bonus Tip: Add voiceovers to your slide decks as reminders to yourself or to publish on your class’s website as an extra resource for students!
Canva for Education Updates & Events
Keep your families in the loop, in style. With Canva, you can use premade templates or your own designs for a variety of communication pieces. Whether it’s your latest newsletter or an invitation to next week’s fundraiser, make it eye-catching with Canva.
School and Classroom Newsletters
My son’s high school has a fantastic newsletter that they send out through Canva, and I know other parents and I always look forward to it. In a school-wide email, they send out a view-only link to the slideshow for families and students to scroll through. Slide after slide is perfectly designed with their school’s branding. They drop in videos from recent band concerts, voiceovers of text-heavy slides, links to important documents and updates, everything a parent or guardian would need to have.
You can do this just for your classroom, too, to make sure your families are always prepared and informed! If you search for school or classroom newsletters, so many beautiful, ready-to-use templates pop up. I really like this classroom news template, especially for the younger grades.
Fundraiser and Event Announcements
If you want people to come to your event, you have to sell it. How? With fun invitations and fliers!
Everyone loves a theme. Are you hosting a whimsical, fairytale musical? Carry that feeling into the branding and sell the experience with this charming flier. Have a spooky Halloween event coming up? Try this witchy invitation and flier. The point is: You can create a special, impactful design for literally any event your school could have.
As a bonus, I love this summer event design! This is perfect for a summer camp or you can adapt it for an adorable back-to-school party.
What are your favorite ways to use Canva as a teacher?
I’m chatting about Canva on all of my socials, so be sure to join the conversation! You can find me on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
