Last year Canva released an exciting update, an education-specific wing of their creativity platform called Canva Education, which also integrates with Google Classroom.
Canva Education isn’t just 100% free for teachers and students, it’s also replete with thousands of education-specific templates for you to take and use in your classroom. From interactive worksheets and video project templates to Bitmoji scenes and Google Classroom banners, Canva has you covered for any design project you can imagine, and then some!
This post has been sponsored by Canva Education. To sign up for a free Canva Education account, click here. The product review and opinions expressed in this post are based solely on my personal views.
Introduction to Canva Education
Many educators might already be familiar with Canva as a creativity tool, and it remains one of the best resources for poster projects, infographics, presentations, graphic designs, and easy-to-make videos.
But Canva has also expanded their archive to include materials teachers can use at any point of a lesson: flashcards, worksheets, online whiteboards, group work templates, and more. Plus, Canva Education also offers a slew of materials teachers can use to customize their classrooms from calendars, newsletters, and lesson plan templates to Zoom backgrounds, Class Dojo stories, Bitmoji scenes, and Google Classroom banners.
Plus, since Canva integrates with Google Classroom, you can create assignments within Canva and assign them through Classroom, where they can open them up and then submit them to you for feedback!
How to Get Your Free Canva Education Account
To get a free Canva Education account, go to canva.com/edu-signup and enter your name, the name of your organization, as well as your school, DepEd’s, Google, or Microsoft certified email domain.
If you already have a Canva account, you’ll want to log into your account first. Once you’re in, go to canva.com/edu-signup and your account will be upgraded for free. This way you’ll be able to integrate your accounts and all of your existing designs will be there ready for you to use.
With a free Canva Education account, you’ll immediately get free access to everything you would normally have to pay for with Canva Pro.
You’ll also be able to manage your classes directly in Canva, where you’ll be able to edit and create assignments that you can push out to individual students or groups of students through Google Classroom.
Rostering Students in Canva Education
Before creating and assigning Canva templates through Google Classroom, you’ll need to set up your class. To do this, go up to the Settings Cog, click on Billing & Teams, and click Create a New Class.
Next, to add students to your roster, click on your team’s name at the bottom left-hand side of the screen.
On the Designs Tab you can customize your banner by changing the class name and, since Canva is a graphic designs program, you can also design your own banner within Canva if you’d like.
To add students to your class, click on the People Tab. There, you’ll see that you have an option to Import your Class Roster from Google Classroom.
Before you sync your roster, be sure to get parental/guardian permission for students under 13 to use Canva for Education.
After clicking Sign in with Google, choose your class from the list in order to import your roster.
*Note, if you don’t use Google Classroom, you can still just share the invite link directly to students.
Lastly, click the Send Invitations Button to invite students to your class.
Once students accept the invitation, they’ll be enrolled in your Canva Education class, and you can begin creating assignments and assigning them directly through Google Classroom.
Editing Assignment Templates
Every template in Canva is easily editable and customizable to fit your students’ needs.
After finding and opening a template you want to use as an assignment, click on any element on the template, and that will bring up an editing menu. Here, you’ll be able to add or delete any of the template’s elements, change the font type, size, alignment, effects, color scheme, etc.
In addition to customizing an assignment template, you can also lock elements on any template. Locking elements fixes certain text boxes, shapes, etc., and helps students understand which part of the template they should manipulate when working on an assignment.
For example, in the assignment below, you might choose to lock all of the elements except the numbers that students need to drag and drop on the number line.
Assign Canva Assignments through Google Classroom
Canva Education’s seamless integration with Google Classroom makes it easy to assign individual copies of Canva templates to students.
To turn a Canva template into a Google Classroom assignment, just click on the three dots at the top right-hand side of the page and choose Google Classroom.
Next, choose your class from the dropdown menu, then click Create Assignment.
Then, click Go, and that will open up the assignment portal where you can give your assignment a name, instructions, and a due date, as well as assign it to a topic.
Completing Canva Assignments and Submitting for Teacher Feedback
Once a student logs into Google Classroom, opens the assignment you just created, and clicks on the link, they’ll be prompted to click the Use Template Button.
After clicking the link, students will be taken directly to Canva where they will have their own copy of the template you assigned, much like the Make a Copy function in Google Classroom.
Once a student is finished with the Canva activity, they’ll need to click Send to Teacher in order to submit their work.
Back on the teacher side, you can see the work your students have submitted by clicking on the Classwork Tab.
There, you’ll be able to review individual assignments as well as give students feedback on their work.
Assigning Collaborative Templates through Google Classroom
In addition to individual assignments, Canva Education features many templates specifically designed for group work.
For example, you can use Canva templates to have students share ideas on an online whiteboard, work together on filling in a graphic organizer, planning a project, or creating a collaborative video, just to name a few.
Just like all the other templates, any template you choose for group work is also fully editable and can be customized to fit the needs of a particular assignment.
Depending on the type of assignment, you may want your class to all collaborate together on the same template, or you might want to assign separate templates to small groups.
First, let’s look at how to assign a single template for your entire class to collaborate on together.
For whole-class collaboration, you might choose one of the online whiteboard templates as shown below.
In this case, since you want all students to join the same document as opposed to editing their own templates, you’ll need to share it differently.
Rather than clicking on the three dots and creating a Google Classroom assignment directly within Canva, you’ll want to click on the Purple Share Button and then click Copy Link.
Next, go to Google Classroom and open the assignment editor.
As you would with any other assignment, give it a name and description, and then click on the Link Icon and paste the editable link to the Canva assignment that you just copied.
Now, when students click on the link, it will take them directly to the same board where they can all contribute at once.
In addition to inviting students to all collaborate on the same board at once, you can also assign separate templates to small groups.
To create separate templates for groups of students, your first step will be to make a copy of the template by selecting File -> Make a Copy.
Then, repeat the same process outlined above of copying and pasting the shareable link.
This time, however, when you create the assignment in Google Classroom, you’ll only want to share that assignment with the students who are in a small group together.
Repeat the process of copying the original template and creating a new Google Classroom assignment for as many small groups as you need.
Now, when students open their assignments in Google Classroom and click on the link, they’ll only see the template that was assigned to their group, and each group will be able to work on their own individual templates.
Decorate Your Google Classroom with Canva Templates
One of the many ways you can use Canva to create designs for your class is by creating custom Google Classroom Banners. If you search “Google Classroom Banners” in the search box, you’ll see that several pre-created banner templates show up, and of course you could also create your own from scratch.
Like every other template, the pre-created banners are also fully editable.
Here, you might want to add different Elements to your Classroom banner to customize it so that it communicates something about you and your class.
In addition to Elements, you can also add your personal Bitmoji to your Google Classroom banner.
To access your Bitmoji, click on the Three Dots on the bottom left-hand side of the screen where you’ll see the Bitmoji icon.
After signing in with Snapchat, you’ll see your Bitmojis show up. Once you find one you want to use, click on it and drag and drop it wherever you want it to go on your Classroom Banner.
Once you’re finished, all you need to do is download the banner and then go back to Google Classroom. Once there, click on your class and select Upload Photo on the banner. Choose the image from your computer, drag the crop tool to cover the entire image, and then click Select Class Theme to see your Canva-designed Google Classroom banner show up!
Conclusion
As you can see, Canva Education is a treasure trove of resources for teachers and students. This post really only scratched the surface of what Canva has to offer. And now that it integrates with Google Classroom, it’s incredibly easy to turn Canva templates into assignments for your students. Plus, it’s 100% free for educators to use!
You can sign up for a free Canva Education account here to get started creating with your students.
For my take on how to take a strategic approach to remote teaching, click here.
For a comprehensive look at how to use technology to personalize learning, increase engagement, foster creativity, and more, click here.
To read more about why I believe technology must be a central part of public education today, click here.
