Workshops
These workshops can be used for live instruction and cover topics ranging from the fundamentals of graphic design to practical everyday business projects.
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Workshop One: This is Canva
This workshop is designed for those looking to explore a whole new way to design.
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Workshop Two: Fonts, Colors, Images
Fonts, colors, and images are important building blocks for any design.
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Workshop Three: Backgrounds, Shapes, Layouts
Take your design to the next level by leveraging elements that provide structure and hierarchy.
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Workshop Four: Branding Basics
Understanding how to build your brand is crucial to your business's communication with the world.
Lesson plans
These resources are for teachers looking to inspire their students to think and express themselves creatively through visual design.
Written by John Spencer
John Spencer is an author, speaker, blogger and assistant professor in Newberg, Oregon. He is passionate about seeing students embrace creativity. It's why he co-wrote Wendell the World's Worst Wizard and co-founded Write About.
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Visual Poetry
Students will explore examples of visual poetry and will learn about how it is different than text-based poetry. After doing so, they will use two figurative elements of poetry and create their own visual poem.
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Presidential Report Card
Students will develop a set of criteria for ranking a president's legacy. They will rank the legacy of that president based upon social, economic, military, and political achievements.
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Market a Product
Students will learn how to identify persuasive marketing strategies in environmental text. They will learn to distinguish between these marketing strategies by creating multiple advertisements.
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Graphic Instructional Text
Students will create a functional text by creating a step-by-step instructional visual. In doing so, they will learn to write directions with clarity and logic.
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Extreme Graph Makeover
Students will learn how to identify various flaws in graphical representations of data. They will reconstruct a flawed graph with correct mathematical reasoning.
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Career Infographic
Students will research information by using correct keyword searches, identifying sources, and analyzing facts. They will create an infographic explaining key information about a specific career.
Written by Monica Burns
Monica is an EdTech & Curriculum Consultant, Blogger, and Apple Distinguished Educator. She's presented to teachers, administrators and tech-enthusiasts at numerous national conferences and Apple Education events. She's a webinar host for SimpleK12 and a contributor to Edutopia and appoLearning.
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Time Travel Adventure
Students will use research skills to gather information on a period in history. They will design a persuasive piece of writing that combines English Language Arts skills with social studies concepts.
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Math Vocabulary Wizard
Students will demonstrate how a math term connects to the real world. They will analyze, curate, and create visuals that demonstrate the meaning of that math term.
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Food Chain: Make Connections
Students will gain a better understanding of the relationships between living things within an ecosystem. They will design a poster that serves as a graphical representation of the relationship between organisms in a food chain.
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Comic Book Creation
Students will learn how to use graphics and visuals to tell a story. They will make a comic book that incorporates a variety of literary elements for the purpose of telling a story.
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Character Analysis: Creating a Web
Students will describe a character in a piece of literature using evidence from the text. They will synthesize evidence in a text to create a product that demonstrates their reading comprehension skills.
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All About A Poster
Students will make a poster that displays important information about a country. In doing so, they will identify key political figures, geographic features, and other notable characteristics about that country.
Written by Paul Hamilton
Paul is the Head of Learning Technologies (Primary) at Matthew Flinders Anglican College in Queensland, Australia. A leader and innovator in the edtech world, renowned for his work in Augmented Reality and iBeacon technology, Paul is a best selling published author, app developer, and sought after keynote speaker.
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Historical Infographic
Students will use chronological sequencing to demonstrate the relationship between events and developments in different periods and places. They will synthesize information from a range of sources for use as evidence in a historical representation, and understand that data can be represented in a variety of ways.
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Author Innovation through Social Media
Students will evaluate how text structures can be used in innovative ways by different authors.
They will learn about how the selection of language features, images, and vocabulary contributes to the development and enhancement of effective social media campaigns.
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Social Change Through Persuasion
Students will understand how visual assets have played a role in social persuasion. They will learn about how the use of text features and multimodal elements can generate an emotional response, and create a redesign based on a current human rights poster.
Written by Steven Anderson
Steven is a blogger, speaker, Educational Evangelist, author, and Dad. A former teacher and Instructional Technology Director and best known as @web20classroom, his expertise is in edtech integration and learning through social media. He also helped create #edchat, the most popular educational hashtag on Twitter.
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Getting To Know All About You
Students will learn interesting facts about their fellow classmates. In doing so, students will understand and master information and digital literacy skills.
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Mathematical Modeling with Candy
Students will make predictions based on previously discovered information. They will also attempt to model distribution rates of colors of various candies.
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Discovering the Periodic Table
Students will understand the elements and organization of the periodic table.They will use the periodic table as a model to predict the relative properties of elements based on the patterns of electrons in the outermost energy level of atoms.
Written by Terri Eichholz
Terri Eichholz teaches gifted students in Kinder through 5th grades in San Antonio, TX. She's been an educator for 24 years, and is a proponent of guiding students to create, problem-solve, and personalize their own learning. You can read more on her blog, "Engage Their Minds," or follow her on Twitter (@terrieichholz).
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Puzzle it Out
Students will acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate words and phrases.In doing so, they will gather vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression.
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Put Your Stamp on History
Evaluate authors' differing points of view on the same historical event by assessing the authors' claims, reasoning, and evidence.
In doing so, students will learn that there can be multiple perspectives on historical events.
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Guess the Mystery Artist
Students will learn about different art movements and artists who are exemplars in each movement.
They will become familiar with art movements like Cubism, Fauvism, Pop Art, Impressionism, and Surrealism.
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An Element Wedding Invitation
Students will learn which elements create compounds when combined in a chemical reaction. They will analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after the substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred.
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A Character's Journey
Students will understand how a specific character changes throughout a novel.They will analyze how complex characters develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
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A Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures
Students will analyze the development of a theme over the course of a text. In doing so, they will review vocabulary used in the text, identify the main theme of a novel, and build an understanding of literary symbolism.
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To Make A Long Story Short
Students will identify themes within a text and analyze their development over the course of the text. They will look at how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account.
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Real World Ratios
Students will learn about the concept of a ratio and how to use ratio language to describe the relationship between two quantities. This lesson plan is targeted towards 6th Grade Mathematics.
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Order in the Court
Students will recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, lesson, or moral.
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Initial Selfies
Students will learn how to isolate and pronounce initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in spoken single-syllable words.
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From Page to Stage
Students will take an in depth look at a character featured in a piece of text they are studying. They will analyze how complex characters develop over the course of this text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
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Illustrative Infographics
This lesson plan is about using infographics to illustrate information. Students will use a computational representation to illustrate relationships among Earth systems and how those relationships are being modified due to human activity.
Written by Vicki Davis
Vicki Davis is a classroom teacher in Camilla, Georgia. She writes the Cool Cat Teacher Blog, hosts the Every Classroom Matters show, and writes about how technology can be used to connect students to the rest of the world. Vicki is working hard to teach the Canva staff how to use the word "y'all" in everyday speech.
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Writing Letters That Matter
Students will learn about personal business letters including formatting, printing, and layout. Students will also be able to create a personal letterhead and practice crafting a letter on their newly designed letterhead.
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Fantastic Fables
Students will read a fable and become familiar with the characteristics of this literary genre. They will also learn to create their own fable based on their understanding of these characteristics. They will then create their own graphics which capture the moral of the story they've developed.
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Literary Devices Unleashed
Students will learn about different types of literary devices used by authors to bring deeper meaning to their writing. Students will compare and contrast similes, metaphors, alliteration, and hyperbole, and will create a graphic based on a quote of their choosing.
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An Epic Event
Students will learn about a famous historical event or a major event in literature. Using this newly acquired knowledge, they will use basic graphic design skills to create an ad, flyer or invitation which captures the details of this event.
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Historical Figure Fan Page
Students will read about and analyze the life of a famous historical figure. In doing so, they will use the knowledge they've acquired about this figure and construct a narrative or explanation about this particular person.
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Scientific Element Fan Page Designer
Students will analyze a scientific element which is found on the periodic table of elements. They will read about these elements, acquiring knowledge about how the elements were discovered and how they are used. They will then create a Facebook banner representing the scientific element of their choice.
Written by William Ferriter
Bill has many different titles. He's an author and a professional development provider with expertise in modern learning spaces and in establishing collaborative communities. What he is most proud of, though, is that he is still a full time practitioner, teaching science to sixth graders in a middle school outside of Raleigh, North Carolina.
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Using Images in School Projects
Students will explore the ethical use of digital content.
They will better understand Creative Commons Licenses and create an engaging visual using an image licensed under the Creative Commons.
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Sugar Kills
Students will learn more about the amount of added sugar that they are supposed to consume on a daily basis.They will develop graphics designed to raise awareness about the amount of added sugar in everyday foods.
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Biodiversity Matters
Students will learn about the important role that biodiversity plays in a healthy ecosystem.
They will develop graphics designed to encourage others to care about biodiversity.
