How to Use Canva to Create Certificates

Canva is a great service for creating all kinds of graphics including collages, posters, greeting cards, and even certificates to print and give to students. In the following video I provide a demonstration of how to create a certificate by using Canva.


Applications for Education
Whether it is to recognize that students reached a goal or just to recognize that they participated in a special event, we all need to create a certificates at one time or another. Canva makes it quick and easy to create certificates that look great and students will be proud to show to their parents.

Getting Started With Weebly for Education

There are three services that I recommend more than any others when I am asked for a recommendation for a classroom blog or website tool. Those are Blogger, EduBlogs, and Weebly for Education. In the video that is embedded below I provide a short overview of how to get started using Weebly for Education.

Why Americans and Canadians Celebrate Labor Day

Next Monday is Labor Day. For most of us in the U.S. and Canada this marks the unofficial end of summer. If your students are wondering why they don't have school on Monday, consider having them complete the TED-Ed lesson Why do Americans and Canadians Celebrate Labor Day? Through this lesson students can learn about the origin of Labor Day as well as learn a bit about changes in labor regulations over time.

The video from the lesson is embedded below.

Create Random Seating Assignments With Mega Seating Plan

On Sunday evening I shared the Mega Report Writer for streamlining the process of writing narrative reports. The same teacher who developed that tool also developed Mega Seating Plan. Mega Seating Plan is a free tool designed to help you create seating charts from a spreadsheet of names or from an imported Google Classroom roster.

To create a seating chart in Mega Seating Plan simply import a spreadsheet of names or import a Google Classroom roster, indicate where seats will be placed in your classroom, and then let Mega Seating Plan randomly assign students to seats. You can quickly alter the seating chart by dragging and dropping names on the chart.

Mega Seating Plan also has a random name selector tool built into it. To use that tool just pick a class list then click the center of your browser window to have a name randomly selected from the list.

Applications for Education
Mega Seating Plan could provide you with a quick way to shuffle the seating plans in your classroom. You might also use it to randomly create working groups in your classroom. To do that just arrange seats in groups then use the random assignment function to put students into working groups.

5 Tips for New Google Calendar Users

On Monday morning I shared a few tips for new Google Docs users. This morning I have tips for those who are new to using Google Calendar. If your school has made the switch to G Suite for Education, these tips are for you.

In the above video you will learn:

• How to create an event.
• How to set calendar reminders.
• How to color code icons/events.
• How to use the agenda view.
• How to print your calendar.