Canva has lots of helpful design tools for students and teachers. Some of those are fairly obvious while others are a bit hidden and easy to overlook. One of those that's easy to overlook is the color hex code field in the color palette selection tool. Once you know how to use it, you might never overlook it again.
The hex code field in Canva makes it easy to make sure you use the exact shade of a color between multiple designs or multiple elements within the same design. For example, let's say I've found a really nice shade of green that I want to use in three parts of my design. I could try to use the color selector and hope that I get it exactly right each time. Or I could copy the color hex code from the first part of the design and then paste it into the other parts of the design. Watch this video for a demonstration of how to use the color hex code field in Canva.
Canva is a graphic design platform that offers a wide range of features for creating professional-looking documents. Some of the key features that may be useful for students include the following:
1. Templates: Canva offers a variety of customizable templates for different types of documents, including posters, presentations, reports, and infographics. This can make it easy for students to create professional-looking documents without having to start from scratch.
2. Drag-and-drop editor: Canva's user-friendly interface allows users to easily create and edit their documents using a drag-and-drop editor. This makes it easy for students to quickly arrange and format their content, even if they don't have advanced design skills.
3. Stock images and graphics: Canva offers a library of over a million stock images and graphics that users can easily incorporate into their documents. This can help students add visual interest to their documents and make them more engaging for readers.
4. Collaboration tools: Canva allows multiple users to collaborate on a single document in real time, making it easy for students to work together on group projects.
5. Cloud-based platform: Canva is a cloud-based platform, which means that documents can be accessed and edited from any device with an internet connection. This makes it easy for students to work on their documents from anywhere, at any time.
6. Download and share options: Canva allows users to download their documents in a variety of formats, including PDF, JPEG, and PNG. Users can also share their documents via email, social media, or other platforms.
7. Text formatting tools: Canva offers a range of text formatting options, including font styles, sizes, and colors, as well as text alignment and spacing. This can help students create documents that are easy to read and visually appealing.
8. Image editing tools: Canva offers basic image editing tools, such as cropping, resizing, and adjusting the contrast, brightness, and saturation of images. This can help students enhance the visual appeal of their documents.
9. Visual design elements: Canva offers a variety of visual design elements, such as shapes, lines, and icons, that users can easily incorporate into their documents. This can help students create documents that are visually appealing and professional-looking.
10. Easy integration with other tools: Canva integrates with a variety of other tools and platforms, such as Google Drive and Dropbox, making it easy for students to access and edit their documents from a variety of devices and platforms.
This Was an Experiment!
The opening paragraph and the list of ten items was written entirely by ChatGPT. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence tool that will generate lists and entire articles based on a few inputs from you. There are a lot of potential ramifications, both good and bad, of using this kind of technology in education. I'll be publishing an article about that later this week. That article will be written without the use of AI.
51 Canva Tutorials for Teachers and Students
Without the use of AI I've created 51 tutorials on how to use Canva's features in classroom settings. The playlist of those tutorials is embedded below and can be seen here on my YouTube channel.
Last week a reader emailed me to ask for help with Canva. Specifically, he wanted to know where all of his videos had gone. He wasn't the first person to send me that question so I decided to make a short video to show three ways to find your old Canva projects and then download those projects. The video is embedded below.
Aside from Google Workspace, Canva is the tool that I've published the most tutorials about on my YouTube channel. In fact, with the publication of my latest video I've now published 45 tutorials about using Canva's many features for making videos, presentations, timelines, posters, greeting cards, worksheets, and many other graphics. This morning I finally put all of those tutorials together in one playlist.
You can find my new Canva tutorials playlist right here. A handful of highlights from the playlist have been embedded below.
I've been using Canva to make all kinds of graphics and presentations almost since the day it was first available to the public. Over the years I've used to make greeting cards, videos, infographics, presentations, posters, timelines, comics, and many other graphics. And, at one point or another in the last five years, I've made videos about how to make all of those graphics. In not particular order, here's my complete list of Canva tutorials for teachers and students.
How to Create a Timeline on Canva
This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Sites that steal my (Richard Byrne's) work include CloudComputin, Today Headline, and 711Web.