Slaughter's Tech Moment
Publications: Newsletters, Flyers, Graphics! OH MY!
Canva is for Creating Magic in Design!
If you have not discovered the magic of Canva, let me introduce you to this wonderfully easy interface as a website or an app. Canva makes graphic design and publication simple and stylish for teachers or students!
Awesome Designs!
Create a multitude of projects (flyers, social media, newsletters, presentations, and more) with the ease of drag and drop. There are many fonts, images, and templates to choose from to make your publications look professional. You can easily layer elements and even make graphics translucent for versatile design. I have been using it for over a year and have only paid one time for an image and it was $1.00 (I just had to have that graphic;).
Make it even more spectacular!
Canva has such a large variety of photos, icons, frames, backgrounds, charts, shapes, and more to make the design exactly the way you have envisioned or better! If that were not enough, you have the option to upload images as well.
Collaboration Ability
Canva allows users to open up designs for peers to edit and comment on projects. This creates great opportunity for students to peer review each other's work. Students can quickly revise work in a digital format even from their mobile device.
Formats
Canva allows users to save projects in jpg, png, or pdf. Share your work swiftly and efficiently through social media as well.
Adobe Spark
Adobe Post- design memes, graphics, announcements, logos, and social media posts
Adobe Page- create stylish ePortfollios, journals, reflections, webpage presentations, and blogs
Adobe Video- make videos with scaffolding included to for help users write and their story
I love that many times Adobe Spark directs users through the project and helps them to create works of art. This makes it useful for novices. Spark has built search of the Creative Commons library of pictures, will allow users to access Dropbox and other storage sources, and has themes for creating eye-catching projects. Post to social media or create a link to share!
Adobe Spark takes a little getting used to and takes awhile to figure out all the possibilities. There are many tutorials out there to assist and I have discovered that students can come up with some spectacular projects with time to play around with the program.
16 Ways to Motivate Students in the Classroom Using Adobe Spark
Weebly
Weebly is a go to for easy drag and drop website design. Weebly allows teachers to quickly update a website and share information. The best part is the site is mobile friendly. Choose from many templates and even alter designs with your own code. Check out the Weebly YouTube Channel.
Check out these tools!
Pics
This site can be used by students to create graphic designs, collages, and edit the look of a photo to help bring the meaning they needing for the message they are creating.
Similar to Be Funky, Pic Monkey has a few differences and gives students some different options in text and design.
Info-graphics
Posters
Thinglink allows you to take an image and make it into an interactive poster with hotspots to documents, presentations, articles, videos, and more! You can even create Thinglink Channel for your classroom.
Check out their blog for more ideas and information.