Cool Tool: Canva

     This week's cool tool was a photo editing tool.  At first when I chose to do a photo tool, I was curious as to how photo editing would play a role in a classroom.  When I got into the program and explored a little, I was pleasantly surprised! Immediately when I signed up, there was a prompt that asked me why I was using Canva- work, personal, or education.  That told me that I would likely find something of use on this website. The website took me to a page that had a tutorial on it.  It showed me how to do the most basic manipulations- search, click, and drag. Then from there it sent me on a mission to create a demo project that allowed me to try out some of the other basic features.  As I scrolled down, there were prompts such as, "click the circle on this page to change the color" and "search for a hat to put on this monkeys head."  It was a nice little tutorial that made me more comfortable creating something on my own.
      There were many design ideas available from the start and I chose to make a poster.  I decided to create a poster about how to find main idea because it is something that I usually write out on a large piece of chart paper and tape up somewhere.  With Canva, I was able to add pictures, a background, more color, and it looks much more neat overall. 

   Canva has many everyday applications such as creating presentations, facebook and blog images, and resumes.  I saw a lot of uses to create pictures and backgrounds to be used on social media pages.  In regards to our needs in education, I found so many uses for Canva.  There are posters as mentioned earlier, flashcards, presentations, infographics, magazine layouts, and flyers.  I imagined making flashcards that feature neat text and impressive photo clues for younger grade levels.  I also see the use of the presentations for collaborative projects.  The tools available seem to be more user friendly to design the slides on Canva than what you would find in a program such as Power Point. 

     With time, I would like to try out some other features and different designs on Canva.  I am also very curious about what the poster will look like when it is printed.  When I chose the poster template, it had the sizing already set up so that hopefully it would not grainy or stretched out when it was in hard copy.

     I felt that Canva is a great tool! It gave a basic tutorial and guided me in the right direction for what I wanted to accomplish.  There is a great deal that you can do with Canva for free, but anything other than the basic layouts and pictures cost about one dollar a piece.  I felt that this the biggest drawback for the program. There were many pictures that I liked, but couldn't use them due to the cost.  That does limit your choices when creating projects.  When it was time to save and download, it was simple and I was prompted with several download options for what fit my needs best.  As a whole, the program is easy to manipulate and very modern.  It is a great tool for classroom use! If you would like to check it out, click the link here .