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content creation

Canva Hacks typed over a colorful background with shapes, confetti, and Cavna's magic shortcuts menu.

Five Canva Hacks for Fun, Creativity, and Productivity

by Miguel Guhlin December 1, 2023

written by Miguel Guhlin

Are you getting started with Canva? It’s an amazing digital creation tool. If you’ve not yet been verified for a free Canva for Education account, I’d highly recommend doing so! Once you’re in and exploring all the amazing features, you might appreciate these productivity hacks I stumbled upon as I got to know Canva. Let’s take a look at a few tricks on everything from editing your uploaded PDFs to masking images.

Did you know?

A few colleagues didn’t know that Canva has an app that works on Windows or Mac computers. Using the Canva app can improve your creation speed. I knew there was an app for smartphones and tablets, but I didn’t know there was one for my desktop. It’s now my favorite way to interact with Canva!

Get Canva’s Desktop App

Hack #1: Importing Presentation Templates to Canva

Want to import amazing content from SlidesMania into Canva? Sure, Canva has tons of great templates, but they don’t have everything. SlidesMania, SlideCarnival, and SlidesGo offer a variety of presentation templates you can use within Canva. Didn’t find what you’re looking for? Don’t worry, there are plenty of other sources of templates available online!

With that in mind, from your Canva Projects home page, you can import presentation templates you find elsewhere.

Click Add new in the top right corner.
Select Import from app in the drop-down menu.
Import your saved template.

What you may not know is that Canva supports other import formats besides PowerPoint. This is good because exports of PowerPoint files don’t often import well into Canva. You may need a simpler, intermediary format, like an ODP presentation. But the simpler the format, the more likely fancy animations will fail. That’s alright, though, since Canva offers its own magic.

Hack #2: Hide, Blur, or Add Effects to Pages

Hiding presentation slides isn’t anything new. You can do it in Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides. But if you “skip slide” in Google Slides, the skipped slides are visible if you share the link. In PowerPoint Online, the skip slide will obscure the slide from presentation view. But, you can still print them to PDF to see any slides the author chose to hide. Canva makes it easy to hide presentation slides (called “pages” in Canva), and you can hide many at once!

Click the arrow in the bottom center of the editor to Show pages in your presentation.
Select the page you wish to hide (it will outline in purple) or press and hold control to select multiple pages.
Hover over a page and click the three dots in the top right corner.
Choose the Hide pages option in the menu.

A neat feature in Present mode on Canva? You can use Magic Shortcuts to blur content or add effects. To enter Present mode, just click the full screen icon in the bottom right corner of the editor.

You can “hide” content in a presentation by blurring it until you’re ready to discuss it, and you can add special effects like bubbles and confetti! To access this menu in Present mode, click the keyboard icon in the bottom right of the screen.

Hack #3: Clean Out Uploaded Items

Want to easily clean out your uploaded items in Canva? Use the Select items tool to choose multiple items.

Click Uploads in the side panel.
Select an image and click the three dots in the top right corner.
Choose Select items in the menu.
Select all items you’d like to delete.
Click the trash can at the bottom of the Uploads pane to send them all to trash.

This allows you to keep your uploaded items area tidy. Trashing items from your upload tray does not remove them from any documents you put them into. That means, unless you are planning to use those items again, it’s fine to select and delete them.

And, remember, items stay in the Trash for thirty days. If you need to restore a trashed item, you can always recover it:

Hack #4: Edit PDFs with Canva

Wish you could edit a PDF? While one of my favorite tools is PDF Reader by XODO for forms, give Canva a try. You can drag and drop the PDF file into the Canva Projects home area. When you start to drag it over, it will look like this:

Then, once Canva has uploaded your PDF file, you can begin editing it right away. What’s amazing is that Canva converts the text in a PDF to become editable, so you’re able to make changes and adjustments.

Here’s a form adapted from a school district’s form available in PDF:

Screenshot by author, adapted from source via Canva.com

All the text in this PDF is edit-friendly. If I need to add content and images or make corrections, I can do that.

Hack #5: Masking Images with Frames

Wish you had an easy way to drop an image or photo into a shape? Canva offers pre-created “frames” you can use. These allow you to mask an image, hiding parts you don’t want people to see. The benefit? You can frame an image into a particular shape, like a cut-out.

To frame an image, first open a Canva project document or make a new one. Then, select Elements in the side panel. You’ll notice a menu at the top of the elements pane. Choose Frames to explore all the options. You’ll find a variety of them to choose from:

Add one of the frames to your document, then import an image or find one in Canva’s Elements. Drag the image into the frame, and it will merge to take the frame’s shape. Double click the image to move it within the frame.

While there are various programs that allow you to do this (Google Slides has a “crop to shape” option), Canva offers a variety of frames. There are more frames available via Mockups in Canva’s Apps area. Watch the video below to see how you could use them, along with Canva’s QR Code generator, to put your QR code or image on anything!

Wouldn’t it be neat to match any image to any shape? Or convert any simple shape to a frame you could use? There are ways, but that will have to wait for another day.

Bonus Hacks!

If you’re a classroom teacher, you can do any of the following:

Create workbooks and worksheets
Turn a single presentation page into a shareable digital whiteboard
Take advantage of the huge number of education templates
Assign activities (e.g. bell ringers, exit tickets, self-reflection) in Canva to students in Google Classroom
Create a teacher slide deck for back to school or parent night

Additional productivity hacks:

Use the Canva Color Palette to match colors to an image
Check out all the amazing tools at the bottom of the Canva.com website

What Are YOUR Canva Productivity Hacks?

Now that I’ve shared some Canva hacks with you, which ones do you plan to try? Maybe you’ve already discovered some tips and tricks of your own. Share them in the comments so we can all reap the benefits!

Explore TCEA Canva Courses to Ramp Up Your Work!

Check out TCEA’s up to date, self-paced, online course: Canva Specialist! This course will make you an expert in Canva’s new Magic Studio AI tools. You’ll also get updated on all the educational features Canva has to offer. Don’t miss it!

Sign Up Now for Canva Specialist Course!

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Check Out TCEA’s $39 Canva Educator Course!

December 1, 2023 0 comment

Three Canva Tools for Making PD Newsletters

by Dr. Bruce Ellis September 26, 2023

written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

Canva has a lot of features that make it an easy choice as your go-to tool for creating and sharing professional development in digestible newsletters and on-the-go bits. We’ll get into the features for you to try in just a moment, and then I’ll share some critical bonus tips to keep in mind. These will come in handy if you want to share PD with peers who have crazy schedules but want to enhance their students’ learning experiences.

Three Canva Features to Try

1. Brand Kit

Canva has a ton of features to help you with a newsletter. Before using Canva, consider setting up your Brand Kit. This will allow you to predetermine the colors, logo, and default fonts that are used in your newsletters and graphics. Having the brand kit established will help your items look cohesive and unified as you continue to create and share meaningful content with your peers. For the brand kit, you will need the Pro or Educator account, which is free with verification for educators! Here is more information about setting up your brand kit to simplify the design process.

2. Templates and Magic Design

One of the main features is to make use of their templates. Begin by clicking on “Templates” on the left-hand navigation menu. Then, in the search box at the top of the window search “newsletter school” and hit Enter. You can use Magic Design to generate a newsletter template using an image you created or have already downloaded. Once you upload the image, it will pull together several newsletters for you to choose from that you can tweak to your liking. Once you get the base Canva newsletter design completed, you can easily duplicate it each time and use it for each issue of your newsletter. Here is a template of the one that I created as if I were in Hutto ISD, a neighboring school district to me.

3. Magic Write

If you need help writing content for your newsletter, then consider making use of Magic Write, Canva’s own generative AI tool, to aid the process. To access Magic Write, open a design in Canva and add a text box or click on the text box you’d like to edit. In the text edit menu, you can choose Magic Write. Briefly describe what you want, and then click the Generate button. This can help you write informative but concise information to include in your newsletter. These can be step-by-step instructions, a motivational thought, ideas on a particular educational topic, or even icebreaker questions for teachers to use in their classroom.

Bonus Tips for Making Newsletters

Tip 1: Use Clear and Engaging Headlines

When creating tools for PD or making newsletters, use headlines that your peers can quickly scan, read, and relate to. Instead of being cute or clever, lean towards being more straightforward. When thinking about what topics to include, consider frequent subjects that come up in the teachers’ lounge. Also, consider touching base with the principal, lead teachers, and counselor for ideas. Then, start each graphic or newsletter with a clear and engaging headline to draw them in.

Tip 2: Amp Up the Visual Appeal

Marketers know that we pay attention to visuals before we even read the associated text. Use this to your advantage by using graphics and visuals that signify the topic in your newsletters. You can easily use Canva’s Text to Image tool to generate images that may be more specific than what you can find in their library. You can also upload images from other tools into Canva to create graphics, but be sure to note the licensing, as you may not have the rights to edit or use certain images.

For example, a newer AI tool that seems to be making a splash for creating amazing images is Ideogram.ai. It’s free to use and is probably the best AI graphic tool to add text to an image. Though not perfect, it does amazingly well. Because this is a publicly accessible tool, be aware that some of the images that other creators have generated may not be appropriate for students. Here are a few images I generated with the tool. When using Ideogram, consider finding an image that has the look you want and use its prompt, but tweak it to better fit how you want the design to look.

a bald eagle in front. American flag waving in the back. colors: red, white, and blue. Text: Go Eagles! — AI-generated images by the author using Ideogram

text: "Science Ideas". beakers, microscope, laptop, cell phone, poster, 3d render, cinematic — AI-generated images by the author using Ideogram

Tip 3: Provide a Feedback Mechanism

Encourage your readers to provide feedback, ask questions, or suggest topics for future newsletters. If they are implementing an idea that you share or have a sample student product photo to share, provide a digital wall or board where they can be a part of the conversation to continue learning and sharing. Padlet works well as an easy tool that doesn’t require a learning curve for your teachers. If using Padlet, consider using the wall layout with sections, since you can set up several distinct columns to which your teachers can add their input accordingly, making it organized for you and all the readers to find things quickly.

Whether you share professional development tips and ideas on a weekly or monthly basis, you are sure to find that Canva can help make your communications much easier and view and read. If you already share a newsletter of such with your teachers, drop us a link to one of the editions and share with our readers. Also, if you find that you have a different tool to put together your newsletter, let us know the name of the tool you love and why it is your go-to newsletter tool.

Featured Image: Screenshot by Emily Horn of Newsletter Templates in Canva, https://www.canva.com/templates

September 26, 2023 0 comment

Artificial Intelligence

New TeacherMade Features Harness AI to Save Teachers More Time

by Laura Bresko July 11, 2023

written by Laura Bresko

TeacherMade’s mission has always been to improve teachers’ lives by easing workloads, supporting effective practices, and engaging with students daily. So how is TeacherMade responding to the release of generative AIs like ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Bard?

To be clear, I am fascinated by AI and have been using generative writing tools since Jasper’s launch in 2021. So with the release of ChatGPT 3.5 in December of 2022, I made the time to check it out. Though super-cool and an improvement over earlier AIs, it was also tedious because it took several prompts to produce what I wanted. Even then, its output could not be 100% trusted. It required editing and fact-checking, so it wasn’t much of a time-saver. ChatGPT 3.5’s capabilities were vast, but so was the amount of time and skill it took to exploit them.

After announcing the more powerful ChatGPT 4, I signed up and gave OpenAI my 20 bucks, trusting the hype. It may well be the best money I’ve ever spent. It’s so much smarter and faster than the free version, easily handling complex, multi-step prompts.

After immersing myself in large language models for many months now, I can say with impunity that reports of AI replacing teachers are greatly exaggerated. The number of Teachers could be reduced someday, but certainly not any time soon. But the question we’ve all had from the start – how will the technology impact students? – is starting to get some real answers. There are predominantly two types of AI tools for the classroom emerging:

Tutor bots that interact directly with students as they work
Prompt intermediaries to make content generation faster

AI Tutor Bots Have Limitations

Other companies see the best use of the new AIs as personal tutors for learners. Khan Academy’s Khanmigo is the first and best example of a tutor bot. Newark City Schools has been testing Khanmigo live in three schools for four months. The bot’s performance brings mixed reviews.

Image of Khan Academy's Khanmingo's home page

On the one hand, Newark’s teachers find Khanmigo useful as a “co-teacher” that allows them to devote extra time to students who need more guidance while enabling the self-driven students to work independently. On the other hand, there are big concerns that the bot might be doing too much of the thinking for students, potentially undermining the development of their cognitive abilities.

There are also financial implications for using AI-assisted tutor bots. Districts wanting to pilot Khanmigo this fall will pay a whopping $60 per student to do so. After the pilot, the cost may even go up. Khan Academy says AI is expensive, and we believe them. Though they offer a discount for districts where more than half of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, the long-term cost of AI in every school district is a major concern. Where will the money come from? What are the implications for districts that can’t afford it?

AI tutoring bots like Khanmigo have potential, but there are still many challenges to overcome:

Tutor bots must complement rather than replace learning
AI must become affordable before use in all schools

AI Content Generation Can Save Teachers Hours

“Prompting” is posing queries or instructions to an AI to produce a desired result. In short, you must know how to speak to an AI to get it to work for you. Companies are popping up daily to help educators produce curricular materials in seconds without learning prompt engineering. Instead of working with ChatGPT directly, you can use a site like Twee as your AI whisperer and bypass prompting.

(Tip: Though I like Twee and some other sites, learning to engineer prompts is essential, so please don’t skip this.)

The belief that all these new companies have in common is AI will bring a renaissance to teacher-created materials. But what are you supposed to do next? Chatbots can endlessly produce test questions, lesson plans, activities, and worksheets. How do you format the output?

Import Your AI-Generated Content Directly Into TeacherMade

So, where does TeacherMade fit into this evolving AI landscape? Unsurprisingly, we remain committed to serving teachers first and empowering them to work with their students. To that end, we’re employing AI for teachers to use with a new feature that will be released later this summer.

As seasoned AI enthusiasts, the best and least expensive approach for AI in the classroom is for teachers to use free or inexpensive AI generators like ChatGPT 4 to produce curricular content; then load the generated content into TeacherMade. Our importer will auto-magically turn the content into TeacherMade interactivities. Teachers will save time creating instructional materials, so they have more time to spend with their students. And all of this at a fraction of the cost of other solutions.

You can see this new TeacherMade AI feature in action at TEKSCon July 25-27, 2023, in San Antonio.

We’re Enhancing Our Features As AI Expands

Importing PDFs: We’re working on importing your existing PDFs and auto-magically converting them into TeacherMades. (Technology-shy teachers won’t be able to resist any longer.) We hope to have this completed in the next few months. And because you can make STAAR 2.0 item types in TeacherMade already, you can freshen up your older materials for use in today’s classroom.

AI-Assisted, Standards-Based Grading: We are enhancing the platform to employ AI to help you grade student writing. AI technology isn’t yet able to do an entire evaluation, but it can help reduce the time spent on each student’s writing artifact. And once standards are part of our platform in the next week or two, we might code AI magic into enhanced reporting.

Pre-Made Activities: Additionally, our subject matter experts are using ChatGPT 4 to assist in creating pre-made activities for the new TeacherMade Content Library. You will see the number of resources over this coming school year. (We’re using the YAG in the TEKS Resource System to guide what gets created and when. We aim to stay one or two steps ahead of you and your classes!)

Colorful graphing highlighting 3 ways TeacherMade is enhancing its features using AI as outlined in the article.

What Is TeacherMade’s Stance on AI?

TeacherMade is sensibly putting AI into use where it has the best chance of success – in the hands of Teachers who can safely harness its power for the benefit of their students. It’s too early to say how tutor bots may impact classrooms, so in TeacherMade classrooms, students will continue to think for themselves with their human teachers guiding the way.

Trust the teacher and give them the productivity tools they need to succeed at a reasonable price – that’s what TeacherMade is about.

(This article was 100% written by a human educator, not a Chatbot. 😉

Worried about Student Cheating?? You can prevent students from pasting AI content into their assignments in TeacherMade. Click here <<

July 11, 2023 0 comment

Content Creation ESL/ELL

Two Canva Tools That Will Amaze You

by Emily Horn May 23, 2023

written by Emily Horn

It’s no secret that I absolutely love Canva. I’m grateful that Canva offers educators and qualifying nonprofits free accounts! If you fall into one of these two categories, consider getting signed up and applying for one. You won’t regret it. I use Canva every single day and take full advantage of the plethora of rich customizable templates, design elements, graphics, photos, and more it offers. It makes my work life better! Canva has recently gifted us with a few solid-gold additions. Let’s take a look at two of my favorites.

Magic Design

This tool is a total game changer. Simply upload your media, or choose from media you’ve already uploaded, and see what layout this new Open AI-powered design tool generates for you. You can choose a design that’s produced as-is and go straight to editing. Or you can choose from several styles and colors, and add your own headlines to see how your changes transform the designs. Once you choose a design, you will have total editing capabilities. But this gives you a great start! To experiment with this tool, be sure you’re logged into your Canva for Education account, and click Try Magic Design under Templates.

Step 1: Upload media or use media you’ve already uploaded.

Image of Canva Magic Design Upload Media Box

Step 2: Choose a vibe or theme!

Image of Image of Canva's Magic Design Choose a Vibe Box

Step 3: Add a headline, if you prefer.

Image of Canva Magic Design Add a Headline Box

Step 4: Click your preferred design and customize the template.

Image of Canva Magic Design Customize Template Box

The Translate App

If you have a design or create a design in Canva, you can now easily translate it. That means, for our English Language Learners, you can provide presentations, worksheets, visual tools, and more in students’ native language! Eliminate the language barrier so that students can learn content and skills on pace with their peers, demonstrating their true capabilities. You can also translate different pages into different languages! I’m going to take a pre-made, editable template available in Canva for addition strategies and show you how to quickly and easily translate it.

Step 1: Open up the design you want to translate in Canva.

Image of Canva Addition Strategies Worksheet

Step 2: In the left menu, click on Apps and search “translate.”

Step 3: Click on the Translate app in the results to add it to your menu items.

Step 4: Select your “Translate to” language, and click translate.

Canva Translated Addition Strategies in French

If you like these tools, check out a few more that Canva introduced this spring! You won’t be disappointed. Let us know how you like them in the comments!

May 23, 2023 2 comments

AI/VR

Five AI Tools to Try (April 2023)

by Emily Horn April 28, 2023

written by Emily Horn

With all the debate and discussion about artificial intelligence in the education world, it’s not surprising that educators’ views cover a wide spectrum. With AI comes a lot of uncertainty, and there are undoubtedly some blurred lines. However, I was recently inspired by Ted Lasso to “be curious, not judgmental.” He explains in the popular show, during a beloved scene, that asking questions before forming judgments and opinions shows curiosity and can lead to more informed decisions. So thanks, Ted! I am now personally trying this approach when it comes to AI tools.

Approaching AI with Openness and Curiosity

I was recently chatting with an educator when I mentioned an article on ChatGPT. Her first response was,

“I’m interested in ChatGPT, but it honestly scares me a little, too.”

Love the honesty! I get that feeling. I was very hesitant to approach these kinds of tools as well. Does using AI mean I’m somehow cheating in my work? Does it make me “less of an educator?” After exploring tools and doing some research, my opinion is this: Not if used properly.

This particular educator is a high school ESL teacher, and I showed her a couple of quick uses for ChatGPT that had recently amazed and excited me. The first thing I showed her was how to use it to help create rubrics more quickly, and the second example was using it to differentiate and translate texts.

“Wow!! Definitely will use this for differentiating texts ASAP. I can see how it would help with content courses like biology. Those are really hard for my students.”

She was getting excited.

“I’m going to try it when I get home! And I could use it with WIDA standards to make personalized rubrics, couldn’t I?? Amazing!”

She was starting to see more possibilities. I went on to explain that the ChatGPT-generated content still needs a lot of proofing and editing.

“But proofing and editing take much less time than creating or searching!” she responded.

Exactly. I loved her openness. Once she saw how useful the tool can actually be, this educator’s excitement was palpable. And this educator just happens to be my mom!

All this said, wherever you stand on the spectrum of opinions, it doesn’t hurt to give tools a try! So, let’s take a look at five AI tools I recently discovered for both work and fun.

1. Would You Rather Question Generator

Auto Classmate Would You Rather Question Generator Home Page

If you’re looking for a fast way to generate questions for an icebreaker activity or to get an intellectual discussion going, this is the tool for you. Clicking the Use Tool Now! button simply pushes you a little further down the page to complete a form with your grade level of choice, topic, and preferred question type. You can see the generated questions from the prompt. You can download the questions for your use. I would highly recommend reading all of them very carefully, because they will more than likely need some editing and revision.

2. Character.AI

This AI tool doesn’t require any login from students, which is great. It allows you to have a “discussion” with a number of famous people. Keep in mind that there are pop culture icons listed as well as political figures, both past and present. Examples include Albert Einstein, Taylor Swift, Tolkein, Elon Musk, Paul McCartney, and more. Click Famous People in the menu bar to see a full list.

I can see this being used to help students fact-check while working on a project. For example, a student can have a “conversation” with Shakespeare, asking questions to gather information. Then, they would need to fact-check the information provided by the AI and cite reliable sources to back it up. Here is an example conversation that I had with William Shakespeare:

Character.AI discussion with Shakespeare

3. Teacher’s Aide

This site does exactly what its home page says: It generates worksheets in less than 60 seconds for any subject and topic. See the grade levels, worksheet types, and additional sections offered.

Teacher's Aide additional sections options

The standard worksheets that are generated are very basic and visually simple. But I like that you’re able to edit the text, although in a limited way, insert images, and print/save it as a PDF. I can see this being used for differentiation, vocabulary practice, formative assessment, and additional practice. Here is an example of a generated sheet for 5th grade, so you can see the type of text and visual that is generated.

Teacher's Aide example generated worksheet

After generating one worksheet, you are prompted to create a free account. At that point, you’ll gain access to searchable tests, quizzes, and lesson plans.

4. YouTube Summary with ChatGPT

The Google Chrome Extension YouTube Summary with ChatGPT does exactly what its name implies. Install the extension, head to the YouTube video of your choice, and click the arrow to the right of Transcript & Summary to access the menu.

Click on the ChatGPT icon to copy the entire transcript of the video and open ChatGPT. Paste the transcript into ChatGPT and enter. ChatGPT will provide a complete summary of the video, ask follow up questions, and more. Within the Transcript & Summary menu, you can also jump to certain parts of the video. Here is a brief video showing how to use this too.

5. Curipod

With Curipod, you can quickly generate standards-based lesson plans on any subject and concept. You can also access a library of pre-made content and a teacher community!

Curipod Submission Form — Example Curipod submission form using a standard from the 8th grade math TEKS.

Curipod example presentation — Presentation generated from the above submission on slope.

Here’s a short video on how the AI generator works. Not only does it generate an editable presentation, but you also have access to backgrounds, interactive elements, or uploads. Pretty nifty!

Learn more about Curipod!

Here’s the different accounts offered by Curipod at present:

BONUS TOOL: CatGPT

Yes, you read that correctly. It says “Cat,” not “Chat.” This one is for all the cat lovers out there, like myself. Get ready for mindless entertainment! We all need it from time to time.

When you get to the site, you’ll notice it looks eerily similar to ChatGPT. When you click for free access, you’ll be prompted to enter your email address. Then, the site will ask you to enter the access code sent to your email. Once you’re in, enter prompts to enjoy cat gifs and lots of meows. Be sure to vote for what feature they add next. I personally am hoping for the “AI-generated cat GIFs with your cat as the main character” option.

I hope you liked this month’s roundup of AI tools to try. Do you have any of your own that you’ve enjoyed? Share them with us in the comments.

More AI Articles

5 AI Tools to Try (March 2023)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools Spur Classroom Creativity
How AI Can Enhance Education
An AI Tool for Generating Higher-Order Discussion Questions
How ChatGPT Can Help with Grading
Four Ways AI Can Help Teach Poetry
How to Improve Google Search Results with ChatGPT
How to Use Canva’s Text to Image Feature
How to Differentiate Texts with ChatGPT

How to Generate Images and Art with AI
How Reliable are AI Detectors
ChatGPT Prompts for Busy Educators
How to Create a Rubric with ChatGPT

More In This Series

Five AI Tools to Try (March 2023)
Five AI Tools to Try (May 2023)
Five AI Tools to Try (June 2023)
Five AI Tools to Try (July 2023)

April 28, 2023 0 comment

Content Creation Digital Literacy Web 2.0 Tool

How to Use Canva’s Text to Image Feature

by Dr. Bruce Ellis December 23, 2022

written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

Canva is a platform that allows users to easily create visually stunning images using artificial intelligence. One of its standout features is the artificial intelligence (AI) text to image function that was recently deployed. This feature allows users to input a block of text and generate an image based on its contents. This can be super useful if you are looking for content-specific images but coming up empty handed.

One of the biggest benefits of the AI text to image feature is that is highly customizable. The more detailed your request, the better it can create photos to match what you might want. But this tool isn’t perfect, so be prepared to tweak your input text and try again. And, as the AI improves, you can expect fewer cases of having to tweak your text in the future. Also, you can reach your image quota for the day, though no specific information can be found as to how many requests you can make before this happens. As their servers and processing power scales, you may find that this is no longer a limitation of using their tool.

Five Steps for Using Canva’s Text to Image Tool

Open Canva, and start a new project.
The first time you use Canva’s text to image tool, you will need to scroll down on the left-hand menu to locate it in the Apps directory.
As shown below, you will need to describe the image you’re looking for as best you can in the text box.
Next, scroll through the styles to select the one you are interested in, or you can just leave it as “Surprise me.”
When you are ready for Canva to generate four options for you to consider, click the “Generate image” button. To use an image, just click it or click and drag it to the stage area. You can then use the image as you would with any other graphic!

Screenshot of Canva's text-to-image tool — Screenshot by author

Four Best Practices to Optimize Image Output

When using Canva’s AI text to image feature, there are a few best practices to keep in mind in order to maximize its impact.

1. Carefully plan the content of your text.

The AI algorithms in Canva will use the words in your text to generate the image, so it’s essential to choose your words wisely. Make sure that your text clearly conveys your intended message and uses language that will be easily understood by your audience. If the images aren’t created as you intended, consider how you can tweak your text input and try again. You may need to be more specific or more generic in your input.

2. Consider the context in which your image will be used and choose a style that fits.

In Canva, you can choose from several options: Surprise me (which will create a variety of styles from your input), Photo, Drawing, 3D, Painting, Pattern, and Concept art (associated icons shown below in order).

Screenshot of Canva's image style options — Screenshot by author

3. Keep your audience in mind when using the AI text to image feature.

Think about what your audience is looking for and tailor your images to meet their needs and preferences. That may mean you have to tweak the wording to include specific objects, colors, locations, surroundings, people, feelings/emotions, etc.

4. You cannot go back to previously generated images, so add images you think you may use to the stage area.

This will allow you to also compare images from several tries. Then, you can just delete the ones from the stage that you choose not to use. Additionally, you can add each image to a separate page so you can go back to them at a later date. Doing this will allow you to save each image individually when you save the file as a JPG or PNG file.

Examples of AI-Generated Images in Canva

Canva offers several ideas to prime the pump in case you aren’t sure what to try first. They include:

A panda riding a bike through a city with a depth of field
A light watercolor painting of koi fish in a pond
A photo of a magical forest city from the future

For the following images, I chose the Surprise me style. Above each set of photos is the text I used to generate the images.

“Settlers traveling across Texas plains in covered wagons during winter“

Various images created by author in Canva

“Phileas Fogg Rides an Elephant as led by a young Parsee guide into the jungle” (in reference to chapter 11 of Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne)

“A scientist mixing chemicals from two different flasks. Smoke rising up from one flask. Liquids are red and blue.”

Be sure to visit and bookmark Canva’s Free AI Online Image Generator page to stay up with the latest info on this fabulous tool. You can also find more exciting news and info by following Cana on Twitter at @Canva!

What will you create with Canva’s new AI text to image tool? How will you use it to support vocabulary and language acquisition, comprehension, critical thinking, and other skills that benefit from having visual supports?

If you don’t already have one, I encourage you to sign up for a free Canva for Education account.

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December 23, 2022 0 comment

Content Areas Content Creation Social Media

Three Social Media-Inspired Student Projects

by Dr. Monica Burns November 1, 2022

written by Dr. Monica Burns

How do you use social media in your classroom? Our favorite social media platforms can act as inspiration for student creations! Today, I have three ideas to get your wheels spinning. These three social media-inspired student projects are flexible and adaptable for different grades and subject areas. So as you’re reading, think about how these projects could be used with your students and the content area(s) you teach.

Caption This

One of the common features you’ll find across social media platforms is captions accompanying a photograph or text that connects to a link or image. You can try a “Caption This” activity with students and have them think creatively about what is going on in a picture or how to communicate a captivating message alongside an image.

For a “Caption This” project, share a picture with students and ask them to write a caption to accompany the image. You might share a few examples to help them get started or provide additional context for the image. If you’ve tried this with students in the past, you might introduce a specific challenge, like a minimum or maximum character count or a list of vocabulary words to include.

Although students could certainly use photographs they’ve snapped themselves, you might decide to locate images for students instead. One of my favorite spots for finding high-quality, royalty-free images is Unsplash. I share a few reasons why I love it in this blog post. Unsplash is an excellent place to go if you’re looking for a landscape or action picture. Alternatively, you might locate a primary source document and share that with students instead.

Carousel of Tips

A popular format on Instagram is a carousel post. This type of post includes a series of images someone can swipe through. These are usually set up to show a sequence of items, a progression of ideas, or a series of connected pieces of information. Students can use a selection of graphics to simulate a carousel post. Here are examples of two I’ve shared on Instagram: Three tips from a back-to-school blog post and Four alternatives to a traditional teacher book club.

Screenshot of an example social media project — *“Three Ways to Help Student Readers Get Ready for School” carousel post on Instagram.*

For this project, you might share examples of carousel posts with students to help them envision their own creations. You can make a carousel post with students in Adobe Express with the new multiple pages option. Alternatively, students can use a slide-based presentation tool like Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint to create a series of images.

Quick Info

With an Instagram Reel or TikTok connection, students can jump on camera and share a handful of fun facts or some quick information about a topic. These videos usually have a person or a captivating background on the screen and quickly present information. Often the caption expands on what is in the video, or there is an additional piece of content, like a podcast episode or blog post, to explore. Here is one I made with ideas for using storyboards in the classroom. In this video, I share tips for tech-friendly activities. Instead of creating these on Instagram, you might use Microsoft Flip or another favorite video tool with your students.

In the math classroom, you might ask students to jump on video and point to three helpful tips for solving a challenging math problem. A science teacher might ask students to make a video with seven vocabulary words their fellow students should know for an upcoming unit of study. Or a social studies teacher might ask students to put three quick facts on the screen about a historical figure or current event.

If you’d like to expand upon these ideas, don’t miss Dr. Monica Burns at TCEA’s Convention & Exposition in San Antonio, January 30- February 2, 2023! She’ll model how to try these projects alongside some of her favorite open-ended creation tools. Early bird pricing ends November 4, so hurry and register!

Save My Spot!

November 1, 2022 0 comment

Content Creation Web 2.0 Tool

Upping Your Canva Game

by Lori Gracey October 3, 2022

written by Lori Gracey

Canva is an online graphic design tool that is perfect for busy people. The Pro version is completely free to educators, which makes it even more perfect. You can use it to create social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, logos, animated GIFs, Zoom backgrounds, book covers, and more. It’s great for making your lessons or newsletters more engaging, whether you are a pro with graphic design or a rank amateur like me. And it works on any browser or on the iOS or Android apps.

Here are a few tips to help you take full advantage of this fabulous tool.

Get to Know the Templates Available

Want to save a ton of time? Spend a few minutes becoming familiar with the types of templates that Canva offers. As an example, it has more than 3,400 templates for creating astonishingly beautiful charts and graphs (perfect for math and science) and 2,490 diagram templates (great for ELA and social studies). Are you hoping to create a fun meme to make your students laugh? 288 templates for that. Need a new background for your PowerPoint or Slides presentation to the PTA? 10,970 templates to choose from. Making a choice board for the students? 103 templates available. Trying to find just the right look for a “getting to know you” This or That activity for the faculty meeting? 35,240 templates. Just spend a little bit of time in the Canva search bar, and you’ll then be ready to rock the world, graphically speaking!

$Canva$

Change the Size of Your Designs Proportionally

This trick is a lifesaver, especially if you’ve ever grabbed a corner of a graphic and then ruined its proportions. Hold the ALT/OPTION key and drag your design elements out by either the side handles or the corner handles to scale them proportionally. Here are a few other keyboard shortcuts to know:

Change text to uppercase: Shift + CMD/CRTL + “K” key
Bold text: CMD/CRTL + “B” key
Duplicate elements: CMD/CRTL + “D” key
Group elements: CMD/CRTL + “G” key
Ungroup elements: Shift + CMD/CRTL + “G” key
And here are even more keyboard shortcuts.

Animate Elements of Your Design

You can easily animate elements on any design. After selecting the template, click on an element (or several elements) that you want to move. Then, find the Animate option on the middle top side of the workspace. There are 12 different ways the image/images can be animated.

Canva

Use Canva with Students

The Pro version allows you to share the Canva project goodness with your students. The teacher sets up a virtual classroom, invites students, and can them have them collaborate on a project. It can be used in the classroom or remotely, with the aid of a video chat tool as well. Comment additions from the students are helpful with @ options, allowing alerts to be sent to the teacher. This lets students enquire about their work as they go, so they can feel confident they’re going the right way. There’s even a free Canva for the Classroom online course to help you get started and a great secondary Canva Lesson Plan to introduce it to the students.

Get More Help to Fully Master Canva

TCEA has two ways to help you become a Canva ninja and amaze your friends and colleagues. One is to take the online, self-paced Canva Educator course. Self-paced means you work at your own speed when you have the time. And you have a full year to complete the course, although most educators finish it in a few days. It’s priced at just $39 and will cover not only the basics of the program but also design principles and how best to use it in teaching and learning.

The second way to get your Canva on is to attend the virtual Canva for Educators Conference to be held on Saturday, October 22 from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Presenters will be experienced Canva users in education, and they will share tons of resources, ideas, and tips with you. Attendees will have access to all of the sessions via recording through November 30. Early registration is just $59 and ends October 7, 2022. Register early, pay $79, and receive access to the full conference and the Canva Educator online course (normally $39). Both of these are bargains!

However you decide to ramp up your Canva skills, make sure that you are taking full advantage of this free-for-educators tool!

October 3, 2022 0 comment

AI/VR

How Can AI Support Student Learning?

by Dr. Bruce Ellis September 28, 2022

written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

How can artificial intelligence support student learning? Let’s explore the potential of AI systems to generate smart content on-the-fly, create powerful visuals to display information, and generate lesson plans. In addition, we’ll address privacy concerns. Read on to learn more about how AI systems are transforming education, and remember: the future is now. Artificial intelligence will help teachers, students, and parents become more informed and engaged with the material they are taught.

Image of laptop with hologram of digital mind

Create smart content on-the-fly with AI.

Using the latest artificial intelligence technologies, AI systems are now able to customize content based on individual user groups. For example, a system can show different content for returning users compared to new ones. All marketers know that personalized content performs better than generic content. For example, a personalized email message has a 26% higher open rate and 88% lower engagement rate than a generic one. Check out Bernard Marr’s blog post How Is AI Used In Education — Real World Examples Of Today And A Peek Into The Future regarding how AI may impact higher education.

AI can create powerful visuals to display information.

Currently, external visual representations can be used to teach students about scientific concepts. Examples include diagrams, photographs, illustrations, flow charts, and graphs. They are also used to help students make inferences and spot trends in graphs and data sets. Students can also use visualizations to understand architectural sketches and traffic flow in real-world settings. And if you’re wondering if AI can help in learning, consider this: The next time you want your students to visualize complex information, consider using artificial intelligence to make it more engaging. Be sure to try out Nite Cafe Studio, one of my favorite AI art generators. See what you– I mean it– can create. You might be very impressed.

Image of school desk with items and graph on chalk board behind it.

Generate lesson plans with AI.

As a teacher, you may have been wondering how AI can generate lesson plans for your students. There are a variety of benefits of AI-centric lesson plans. These plans are not only appealing to STEM-oriented students. They can appeal to students of all ages and backgrounds. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at some of the most promising applications of artificial intelligence in education. While you do have to be rather techy right now to have AI generate lesson plans, Dan McCreary shares how to do it. If you aren’t techy, then find a friend who can run with Dan’s ideas and make it work for you.

More Resources

Image of person's hand reaching out and touching digital hand

Be sure to follow TCEA for more resources regarding how AI can support teaching and learning. Besides blogs, webinars, and workshop sessions on AI, we are in the process of writing an online course to help teachers learn more about AI so they can implement it in their classrooms with confidence.

Do you have a resource you found helpful for learning about artificial intelligence? Drop us a comment and let others know about the website, video, or resource so they can also learn from it.

September 28, 2022 0 comment

Content Creation Web 2.0 Tool

Free Content, Templates, and Images with Freepik

by Emily Horn August 9, 2022

written by Emily Horn

Who doesn’t love free resources? Freepik is a website with a massive library of more than 25 million resources, and among those are images, banners, posters, clip art, and more, that could be useful to educators. Some of it is free! Let’s take a look, but first I’d like to tell you two things I like about Freepik.

#1. Their editing tool, Wepik.

Let’s say you find a great template or background to use, and you’d like to edit it. Freepik does give you the opportunity to edit some free images online using their editing tool, Wepik. When you click on an image you like, if it’s editable, you’ll see the two options below.

Once you click Edit online, you can access menus with tools that will allow you to remove backgrounds or objects, filter, flip, add text, etc. within Wepik. And it’s really user-friendly, which is great.

#2. Clear instructions for attribution.

Artists deserve to be paid for their work, and if offering it for free, they deserve to be attributed. It’s important to properly attribute someone, not only because it’s the right thing to be but also because it’s the law. Freepik makes it easy! When you find an image you like, under the Free License section, you’ll see a grey link: “How to attribute?”

Once you click the “How to attribute?” link, a box will pop up with information on how to attribute depending on where you will be using the image. Pretty great, right?

Freebies through Freepik

Here are some links to filtered resources that might be particularly useful for educators. Once you’ve clicked a link below, to see only the free resources for each link, click the Free button under License on the menu to the left side of the page.

School Freebies (downloadable folder)
School Images
School Banners
School Posters
Education Illustrations
School Posts
School Schedules
School Clip Art
Education Certificates
School Coloring Pages

Two Bonus Sites by Freepik

I also wanted to mention two other sites by Freepik. Flaticon offers free icons, stickers, and logos, and Slidesgo provides free templates for PowerPoint and Google Slides presentations. Pretty awesome! Both of these are worth checking out, too.

I hope you enjoy exploring and creating with all these free images, icons, templates, and more! Have you created something amazing with these resources? Drop a link in the comments and share with us.

August 9, 2022 0 comment

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