Back on February 4th, 2015 TLT posted our Top Ten Tech Tools and for today’s post I would like to highlight two of those tools, Canva and Haiku Deck , and share a few ways to use them in the classroom. Both are free, easy to use, and rely on images instead of a lot of text. Here are a few suggestions on using them with your students:
Canva
These uses are from Holly Clark’s 5 Great uses for Canva in the Classroom
Think-Pic-Share
Think – First, ask students to think about what they learned and find a way to summarize it. Being succinct and articulate is a very important 21st century skill and NOT one students do very well on their own. Teaching the art of concise writing – that is still able to catch the readers attention is not easy to do. Learning how to do this is extremely valuable in today’s 140 character world.
Pic – Next, find a picture (at this point teach about creative commons) that is a good graphical summarization of what was learned.
Share – Gone are the days where students turn in work that it is only seen by the teacher, graded and then returned. Once they are done and have shared their work…they look to see what others have turned in. Students will compare their designs with the other students and begin thinking about their thinking – or better yet thinking about their learning.
Quick Reflection
Canva can be used as a quick reflection tool. What about a six word summary about what was just learned.
Collaborative Designing
Students can share a Canva with another student – and together they can work to make it better. It might be smart to make each Canva go through one other “student editors” or “Co-creators” eyes before being published.
For a tutorial on Canva visit http://goo.gl/5XHIaL
Haiku Deck
The uses from Holly Clark’s post that I listed above can also be applied to Haiku Deck. For the Think-Pic-Share under “Think” Haiku Deck limits bullet points to five and limits the amount of text that can be added to a slide so students will need to be succinct. Under “Pic” Haiku Deck pulls from Creative Commons and cites them. This is a great opportunity to talk with your students about Copyright. For Holly’s Quick Reflection idea keep in mind that Haiku Deck limits bullet points to five and limits the amount of text that can be added to a slide.
Digital Portfolio
Haiku Deck is not limited to images from Creative Commons. If using an iPad any photo in the Camera roll or if using the web version any image on the Computer can be used to create a slide. In addition to an image the student could add text to reflect.
For a tutorial on Haiku Deck visit https://goo.gl/rbtNxN
