Tag: Canva

Canva Choice Board made with Bingo Card app
3-12, Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Teaching Tools

Make a Canva Bingo Card/Choice Board

Terri Eichholz

Canva for Education has many bingo card templates, but did you know that it also has a Bingo generator app? This means you can not only make Bingo cards, but also even create choice boards that look engaging. I’ll go through the steps that I used to make a choice board in a few minutes.

Get Your Words

What do you want to put on your Bingo Card? Maybe it’s vocabulary or famous people for a bingo game, or maybe it’s tasks for a choice card. Maybe you don’t know. If you don’t already have a list, you can open a Canva Doc and use the Magic Write feature to generate some ideas. (There will also be a limited amount of pre-formatted lists in the Bingo Generator app.) I went ahead and gave Magic Write the following prompt, “9 tasks for 3rd graders to do to demonstrate their understanding of metamorphosis. Each task should be 4 words or less. You will want the prompt to specify the number of words if it’s generating tasks or the sentences will be too long for the generator to fit properly in each cell.

Get Your Template

Once you have the words/short phrases you want on the card listed, highlight and copy them. Then, it’s time to find your Bingo Card template. Do a search on Canva’s home page for “Bingo Card” and choose the one that looks close enough to what you’d like in design and number of cells. Open the template. Delete anything that’s already in the cells, and design your card. If you think you are going to want multiple cards that have the cells randomly rearranged, make that many duplicates of your card when it’s design is ready.

Find the App and Paste in Your List

Since I have been using the app, it appears in my left menu as “Bingo Cards.” I can click on it, and the generator menu that you see above appears. However, you may have to locate the app the first time by clicking on “Apps” in the menu and searching for it. Note that if “Bingo Cards” does not appear in your search, you may be using a design in which that app doesn’t work. For example, you can’t find it when you are making a Doc.

Paste your list in where it prompts you to “Enter some words.” Then select the grid size and number of cards you would like to generate as well as the font. I turned off gridlines because I already have a pretty template and don’t want the lines.

Create Bingo Cards

When you hit the purple button, cards will be generated on the side as you can see below. These are actually transparent images that you can drag over to your template, resize, and fit them as you like.

The generator went a bit wonky with the font sizes, I’m guessing because I went with phrases of different lengths instead of single words. I’m okay with that because it still save me a ton of time, the words are legible, and the template makes it less stark.

Conclusion

Once you do this process one or two times, it gets even faster. You can probably even have older students make their own Bingo Cards or Choice Boards, and they will enjoy the magic. Let me know if you think of any other ways to utilize this Canva App! Check out this post if you want to learn more about how I combined AI with Canva to make differentiated Choice Menus.

red card for valentine day
3-12

Bulk Create Valentines with Canva

Terri Eichholz

I’ve been watching a lot of short videos made by Canva users demonstrating the use of the “Bulk Create” tool. If you’re an old-timer like me, it’s similar to Mail Merge. Most of the videos I watch are showing how people who create social media content can benefit from “Bulk Create,” but I always like to think how I would use it in my classroom. With Valentine’s Day coming up, I decided to test out how “Bulk Create” could help me personalize some Valentines for students.

Step 1: I went to ChatGPT and asked it to generate some phrases I could put on Valentines cards from teachers to students. At first it gave me quotation marks around each phrase so I revised my request, and you can see what I got below. If you are reluctant to try ChatGPT, I’ve already copied and pasted them to a spreadsheet that you’re welcome to use here.

Step 2: If you aren’t using the spreadsheet I linked above, copy and paste your phrases to your own spreadsheet. Then add a column called, “Name” and add your student’s names. If you already have a spreadsheet with student names, create a new column, title it “phrase” and add the phrases to that. Download/Save the spreadsheet as a CSV file.

Step 3: Open Canva, and choose a Valentine template you would like to use. I chose a postcard that looks like this:

Step 4: Adjust the text. After an experiment, I realized the bottom text of the circle wasn’t going to work, so I deleted it. I also wanted to add student names after Happy Valentine’s Day, so I created a new text box and added that. Because I wanted there to be an exclamation mark at the end, added that in a separate text box.

Step 5: Begin the Bulk Create process by looking at your menu on the left side. If you don’t see Bulk Create as an option, click on apps. In the picture you below, you can see it underneath the “More from Canva” headline. Choose Bulk Create. You will be asked if you want to enter information manually or upload it. Upload your CSV file.

Step 6: Right click on the parts of your design you want to replace with items from your spreadsheet. Choose “Connect Data” and select which column should replace it.

Step 7: Generate your data. If you don’t want some of the names or phrases you can uncheck them before you generate.

Step 8: Download your file as a PDF, print out, cut, and you’re ready to give them to your students!

I’d love to hear what other ideas teachers have for using the Bulk Create tool in Canva! It could definitely be a time-saver!

Want some more Valentine’s Day ideas? Click here to download my free updated PDF of “Would You Rather Valentine’s Day Math.” And here is my Wakelet full of other fun!

K-12, Student Response, Teaching Tools

Presenting with Canva

Terri Eichholz

I’ll be honest. I was doing fine with Google Slides. Sometimes I created my slides in Canva first because I liked the design options, but I would then just download the slides as PowerPoint and re-upload them to my Google Drive to convert them to Google Slides when it was time to present.

However…

In case you haven’t noticed, I like to learn new “stuff” and try it out — and I am learning a lot of new stuff you can do with Canva now that I’ve followed a few content creators on TikTok. I subscribe to the Pro version of Canva because I can use it for so many things with my business, but teachers can use that version for free. So, I thought I would share a few reasons you might want to try presenting with Canva in case you want to give it a whirl.

First of all, you can either create a presentation in Canva, or import one from Google Slides or PowerPoint. If you are doing one of the last two, go to your Projects page, click the + sign on the top right and either upload a saved PowerPoint or go to “Import from app” and choose Google Drive.

Click on the presentation, and edit it however you like. When you are ready to present, click on the Present button in the top right corner. As you can see in the short video below, you will have some options on the lower right part of the screen. You can use the pointer, or hide it. You can also start a live Q&A, which basically opens a chat window next to your presentation (love this for presenting to adults, not so sure it would be practical with K-12 students). You can hide or end the chat whenever you like.

But the really fun/practical feature that I think teachers will like are the magic keyboard shortcuts. When you click on the keyboard icon on the bottom right, you will see a list of options that you can activate during your presentation at any time just by hitting a key. For example, if I want participants to think and discuss a slide for 5 minutes, I can just hit “5” on my keyboard and a timer appears. Hit “X” and it disappears. A student says something outstanding, and I can tap “M” for a Mic Drop or “C” for Confetti. There’s more (including a Spider and a Ghost — not sure if these are just during the month of October or year-round).

Another cool option is that you can click on the 3 dots on the bottom right, and get the option to “Share Remote Control.” You can give the link to anyone. I sent it to my own phone, and my phone became a presentation remote. This is a great option for teachers who don’t have a remote, and want to walk around the classroom as they present.

I won’t always be using Canva to present, but I love having another option that has some unique features, and it’s fun to sprinkle a little novelty into the school day. Thanks to the NEISD Elementary GT Teachers who were patient when I tried my first Canva presentation out with them over Zoom!

black and white laptop
K-12, Teaching Tools

Mattergrams: Canva Templates Shared by Angela Maiers

Terri Eichholz

There are so many things that I love about this idea, “Mattergrams,” from Angela Maiers that it’s hard to think of where to begin!

Last week, I had lunch with a friend, and confessed that I hadn’t been feeling very “useful” as a person lately. A few days later, I received a beautiful card in my mailbox that, basically, reminded me that I matter. It made my day, and I have a feeling that I’m not the only person who could use this kind of pick-me-up — especially lately.

I’ve been a fan of Angela Maiers for many years (here is the first post in 2012 of several that I published on this blog about her). You can visit her website, Choose 2 Matter, to find out more about her mission. When I saw a recent Twitter post from her regarding “Mattergrams,” I had to click on the link to see what it was all about. After receiving my card from my friend a couple of days ago, I was reminded of the importance of telling people that they matter to you, and Angela Maiers has given everyone a simple way to do this. She offers 16 “Mattergram” templates that you can click on, edit, and share with the person whose day you want to brighten.

This is a wonderful concept, making it simple to take a few minutes to let someone know how important they are. But I was also fascinated by her method of delivery — using Canva in a way I hadn’t considered. I knew that you could publish a Canva creation to the web, and I knew that you could share Canva templates, but I never thought of combining those ideas in the way that her “Mattergrams” page does. This is the kind of content that makes so much sense to busy educators who want to give students choice without overwhelming them with options.

Educators and students get Canva free, though there are some Pro features they can’t use. However, as far as I know those subscriptions do give them the option to share template links and as websites, along with all of the other sharing options. So, as a teacher, you can find a few templates for something (like brainstorming templates, which abound on Canva), make links for them, add them to one page, and publish it as a web page. (Click on “Share” on top right, then “more” if you don’t see the options you want in the drop-down.) Share that web page link with your students, and they have choices without having to spend valuable class time hunting for them.

Canva Sharing Options

I know that sounds like it would be time-consuming, but Canva’s numerous templates and multiple sharing options really do make it easier than designing something from scratch. In the meantime, if you have a moment, send a “Mattergram” to someone out there. I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t need a boost right now!

For more ideas of how to create with Canva for your classroom, check out this post!

3-12, Apps, Education, Student Products, Websites

Hexagonal Reflections

Terri Eichholz

Update 5/10/2022: For more End-Of-Year Activities, visit this post.

One of the things I wanted to try this year was to ask my students to do hexagonal thinking as they reflected over what they had learned.  Since my 4th graders had already done some hexagonal thinking this year, I thought they might like to experiment with this activity.

First, they visited our class blog where I have been posting pictures from throughout the year.  I showed them how to filter the categories to find all of the blog posts from their class.  Then they chose pictures that were meaningful to them and saved them to their home drives.

After choosing 4-5 pictures, the students signed in to my account on Canva, and created their own blank “A4” projects.  Once the project opened, they were directed to use the search window to find a hexagon frame.  In Canva, frames have a cloud and blue sky in them.

Screen Shot 2017-05-17 at 7.24.43 PM

What I like about frames is that you can drag pictures into them, and they will take the shape of the frame without overlapping.

After the students added a hexagon frame, they resized it and copied it so several could fit on one page.  Once their frames were arranged, they uploaded their pictures and set them in the frames.  Then they used text designs to explain the connections between pictures that shared sides.

You can see a couple of examples below.  They would probably make more sense if you had been in my class this year, but this gives you the general idea.

This went better than my last visual hexagon activity, but I think I will improve it next year by giving a few more guidelines for the “connector” texts so the students will try to find unique parallels that aren’t readily apparent.

For more ideas for end-of-the-year activities, here is a recent post I published.

Olivia

Audrey

Apps, Augmented Reality, Creative Thinking, Education, Independent Study, K-12, Research, Student Products, Teaching Tools, Videos

Give the Green Light with a Green Screen

Terri Eichholz

“You mean they didn’t really go there?” a student asked me.

She was pointing to a bulletin board of Photo Mapo projects by my 1st graders.  Each student had chosen a Google Street View image of a landmark in the country they were studying.  Using the Green Screen app by DoInk, the students inserted pictures of themselves in front of the landmarks.  They also took video of themselves explaining the landmarks.  The pictures were inserted into Photo Mapo, linked to their videos on Aurasma, and presto – interactive postcards.

Photo Apr 14, 8 52 49 AM

Several of my grade levels have taken advantage of the Green Screen app we purchased this year.  My 2nd graders used it to portray themselves in front of famous bridges around the world, and one chose to use it to make a video about her biomimetic invention.

Biomimicry

In yesterday’s post, I showed how word clouds can be fun with the Green Screen app (thanks to Tricia Fuglestad for the idea).

Tricia also gave me the idea for the Time Magazine covers my 5th graders worked on last week.  Here is a link to her post about this project.  For our own versions, my students used Green Screen by DoInk and Canva.

Time Magazine (Some of my students have become so familiar with using the screen that they automatically turn it around to the blue side if a student is wearing green so he or she won’t appear as a disembodied head.

If you want some more green screen ideas, I highly recommend you do a search on Tricia’s Fugleblog.  Don’t have the ability to buy apps? Touchcast is free, though not quite as user friendly for younger students.  No green screen in your classroom?  There are tons of instructions for makeshift screens on the web, including pizza boxes, science boards, sheets, and paint.

Let your students travel to any continent, planet, or even the future with a green screen.