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This Week's App: Canva

What is Canva?

In this week's episode, we covered the graphic design app Canva. It is often used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents, and other visual content. The tool is simple to use but produces high-quality graphics.

What can it be used for?

Dorian Peters in her book *Interface Design for Learning: Design Strategies for Learning Experiences, says, "*We get most of our information about the world through our eyes. The visual isn’t just a veneer; it’s the single most important source of information for most people" (75). Whether you are creating a presentation, putting content in an online course,

Canva is such a powerful tool because it allows you to easily visualize anything.

or making visuals for your classroom. We all agree that visualizing content and ideas is important. It allows our students to process new ideas in different ways and conceptualize processes in different ways. Canva is such a powerful tool because it allows you to easily visualize anything. In Canva, you can use templates to create anything you want. You can create mindmaps, graphs, icons, images, gifs, infographics, and much more. By default, Canva uses a minimalist approach which means your graphics can be simple powerful tools in your presentations, classroom, or online course site.

Below is an example of a badge I created through Canva for one of my online courses. I used this as an award for completing certain activities in an orientation course the students had to take.

It was super easy to pull in a few shapes and search for a compass icon for the badge. Once I was done I was able to download it as an image and add it to the course with no problem. You can use similar templates to design an image to the exact size or format you want all on their free plan.

You can also create plenty of visuals, icons, images, and more for your classroom, presentations, or online course.

How do you get started?

If you do not have one already, you will need to create a free Canva account to use the tool. To get started, review the Sign up or Log in to Canva guide.

To get started using Canva we recommend

1. reviewing Canva's Tutorial: Create your first design guide on their website,
2. and then check out Canva's templates.

You can also learn more or look up answers to questions at Canva's help center