Tech, Apps, and Tools: Oh My!

Tech, Apps, and Tools: Oh My!

And so we trek on with the ed tech tools and app journey!

This week, I chose to explore Canva to help me deliver content for future lessons. I have used it once before in another grad class I took a couple of semesters ago, but barely touched upon it. At the time, we were prompted to use it as an ice-breaker-type activity to create a quick visual, but barely got into any of its features or capabilities. For this semester, it has been brought up a couple of times in class, so I decided to try it out again and dig just a little deeper. 

Long story short: I tried it to create a little lesson on the water cycle. I wan't "wowed" by it, but wasn't really disappointed with it. I might keep it in mind for future lessons, but it was not my favorite. 

It seems Canva is geared more towards graphics and detailed visual aids. It would be really good for making promotions for businesses or events. I can see using this to create posters, flyers, or promotional/event/business pages. I had to dig through the endless tutorials to find one that was geared towards the presentation aspect of it, comparable to Power Point or Google Slides. Compared to the last two tools I chose to create within, EdPuzzle and Play Posit (where they were both SO easy to create within, and I could create a lesson within one sitting), I found that it took a handful of sittings to create an equally meaningful lesson within Canva. 

Creating within it, I found that there seem to be a gazillion template options, but again, most seemed to be geared toward business or marketing promotion. There are a lot of template options and customization, almost too many to the point that it was almost overwhelming. It is extremely visual-centered. Almost too much. Adding slides was pretty standard. Since I have enjoyed creating within Google Slides, and I enjoyed the animation feature within Google Slides, I searched within Canva for an animation feature. I could not find an animation feature. I did, however, find a "stickers" option where I could add fun little graphics that had a little animation to them. Upon digging a little deeper I did see that there is an animation feature with the paid version. In fact, there seems to be a TON more options in the paid version. Even some very simple images and even many fonts are only available in the paid version. 

Compared to Google Slides, I have found that there are way more free options for Google Slides compared to Canva. I was surprised at how many basic-ish fonts were even only available with the paid version of Canva. Also, within Canva, I found that there were many aspects of it that I had to Google on how to use them where as in Google Slides, it was much more self-explainable. Another odd thing: I could not find an underline option for the text! I even tried different fonts to see if they brought up the underline tool, but it did not. 

As far as videos, these past couple of weeks I had been used to creating within EdPuzzle and Play Posit, where they had plenty of already created videos to choose from. However, Canva does not. They do have background videos of scenery and whatnot, but not already created videos from other users. Of course, you can still add a YouTube video and alike, but I even found the "add video" feature hard to find. It seemed as if the tab to add a video was almost hidden. You had to scroll all the way down on the left menu side, and even so it was not nearly as straight forward as Google Slides. The embed and video option is hidden at the bottom, under a "more" button. Not sure why this option is so hidden... (take note that he "videos" option seen in the below screenshot is only for those background videos I mentioned).

Speaking of background videos, I did find that in the end I did enjoy adding a background video of rain (ya know, for the water cycle) and being able to overlay some text over the video...

Also, comparing to the most recent tech tools I've used (EdPuzzle and Play Posit), I searched for an audio notes tool within Canva, but did not find one. 

As far as adding images, I do recall another classmate mentioning how she had some issues trying to add images within Canva. In my limited experience with Canva recently, I found that I was able to add images I found from the web just fine (just a simple "copy and paste" worked fine for me). 

All in all, for my personal experience and needs, I would rate Canva a 7/10. It was not a very quick initial experience for me. I certainly prefer Google Slides over Canva. However, for any poster or flyer needs, I would consider using Canva.

Click HERE for my Canva presentaion. (Sorry, would normally embed, but could not find an "embed" option in Canva, and while trying to embed I accidentally erased my whole blog post. Thank goodness for Ctrl-Z!!!).