I was introduced to a new (beta-stage) website that is a design platform for those who find programs like InDesign and Photoshop a little wieldy. It is called Canva. It is free with email or Facebook signup and has loads of possibilities for school use – the most prominent being to provide students with templates that can be customized to produce really slick presentations, infographics, posters and more. Their blog has lots of design ideas and I personally found the site very intuitive and easy to use. A lot of the features are free but some of the more ‘premium’ graphics and backgrounds are available for purchase.
The introduction came via a blog I follow, written by a woman with a passion for writing and a desire to see children flourish as writers. I have posted before about Patricia Zaballos and her Writers Workshop and I really enjoyed her take in her latest post on using tools such as Canva for students to create their own infographics as a way of representing the research they have done. Take a look at her full post here.
In honor of Patricia, I used her blog to try out one of the templates:
Our current unit is on How We Express Ourselves and the different reasons Artists create art. I want my kids to take a look at some TED talks that highlight different art forms so I then went ahead and made the following graphic to share with my class tomorrow. Clicking on the names takes you to the website.
Simple. Beautiful. Worth your time.
sonya terborg 