How to Design and Print Classroom Posters Using a Standard Printer

Yesterday I published a blog post and video about the free email etiquette posters that I created and how you can have them professionally printed by Canva. Unfortunately, Canva's free printing offer is only available to teachers in the United States who have Canva for Education accounts. Furthermore, it's only valid for one day (August 26th). Fortunately, I have a solution to those problems. 

If you have designed a poster in Canva or with a similar graphic design tool, save your design as a PDF. Then use Block Posters to print your poster for free on your own printer. Block Posters is a web-based tool to which you can upload a high quality graphic then divide it into letter-sized chunks for printing. Print out each section and put them together on a poster board to make your own poster.

In the short video that is embedded below I demonstrate how to design a poster in Canva and then print it with Block Posters.



Applications for Education
When you have designed a great infographic or poster online that you want to display in your classroom, Block Posters is a great tool for you to use to print it. Want to create a giant jigsaw puzzle? Block Posters could be useful for that. Or if you have students create their own infographics that they want to display, you can print them out with Block Posters.

An Old Story About Digital Badges and Why Kids Like Them

In the last two weeks since I published a video about creating a badge tracker in Google Sheets, I've told the following story from May of 2015 three times to people who have asked for my opinion about digital badges and whether or not they're worthwhile. 

Rhythm Fit - New Lesson Plans from OPEN Phys Ed

Last spring I highlighted OPEN Phys Ed's National Field Day activities and lesson plans. For the new school year OPEN has published a new collection of lesson plans, activities, and videos for K-8 students. The new collection is called Rhythm Fit. You can access all of the Rhythm Fit resources right now with a free OPEN Phys Ed account. 

Rhythm Fit is a series of physical fitness activities set to music created by Hip Hop Public Health. Don't let that description make you think that Rhythm Fit is just a set of dance activities. As you can see by watching this short video from the Rhythm Fit collection, the activities incorporate equipment commonly found in school gyms. The Rhythm Fit collection includes lesson plans (PDF and Word versions available), activity cards that you can distribute, assessments, and demonstration videos. 

Applications for Education
One of the things that I really appreciate OPEN Phys Ed in general and the Rhythm Fit collection in particular is that kids don't have be natural athletes in order to be successful as they would in traditional physical education activities. Furthermore, OPEN provides suggestions for UDL adaptations to help teachers include all kids in physical education.

Free Email Etiquette Posters

In this week's Practical Ed Tech Newsletter I shared a bunch of resources for teaching about digital citizenship. In that newsletter I included a link to two posters about email etiquette that I created last fall. I also mentioned that Canva is running a free poster printing promotion later this month. 

You can get PDFs of my email etiquette posters for free right here. Once you've downloaded the PDFs you can then import them into your Canva for Education account. Then on August 26th you can request professional printing of the posters from your Canva for Education account. Watch my short video below to learn how to download my email etiquette posters and import them into your Canva account. 

Disclaimer: I do not have any current affiliation with Canva. Read all of the fine print on Canva's offer to find out if you meet the eligibility requirements for their free poster printing offer.

Book Creator Now Offers Audio, Video, and Text Commenting

Last week Book Creator introduced a great new feature just in time for the start of the new school year. That feature is the option to add video, audio, text, and emoji comments to students' books. The new feature is still in beta, but you can try it right now. You can add comments to any page within books you've created or books that your students have created in your class library. 

Watch my short video that is embedded below to see how easy it is to use the new commenting feature in Book Creator. 

Applications for Education
The new commenting feature in Book Creator should make it easier than ever to give students feedback on their work in the way that works best for you and for them. It could also be a great tool for student to use for peer-editing.

Learn more about Book Creator in the following blog posts:

• Image Search and Autodraw - My Favorite Book Creator Design Tools
• A Short Explanation of Book Creator in the Classroom