Usng Canva to create videos - A Grade 4 lesson

What is Canva?

Recently I obtained my Canva.com badge on the Microsoft Educator Centre (https://bit.ly/3hPZN1F). I love Canva. I am hoping I can take advantage of the Canva Pro free offer soon as a teacher. Canva is a graphic design platform that has a free version. It can be used to design visual content such as cards presentations, posters, documents, presentations and much more. The app includes templates for users to use. Canva recently added a new option to record videos and insert them into your presentations and graphics, or download them. In early May my Grade 4 class had such fun creating Mother’s Day videos so I thought would show what we did. 

An explanatory video

Richard Byrne has a great video that explains this new feature: 'How to Record Videos in Canva- New Feature! https://bit.ly/3kwuqLj

 

This is what we did in class:

• First we created our Mother’s Day poem – a simile poem.
• Then we opened Canva and selected a Mothers’ Day card. We added a page to write our poems.
• We added music to our poem.
• We downloaded the video and sent it to our mums by email.

I created a PowerPoint tutorial for the class to follow: 

Student examples: 

The class loved trying out this new feature.  We could have gone further and added voice narration using an external online voice recorder, such as https://www.rev.com/onlinevoicerecorder and then inserting a narrated voice message as well. Perhaps we'll do that next time!

I can't wait to try out some new ideas using Canva.com with my class.  

Extra Reading

Here are some posts about Canva that I am planning to explore:

1. 'Canva In The Classroom: Getting Started, Example Designs, And Tips!' by Kathleen Morris.
https://www.theedublogger.com/canva/

2. '13 ways to use Canva as a teacher' by Jacqui Morris: https://askatechteacher.com/13-ways-to-use-canva-in-your-classroom/ 

3. 'What is Canva for Education? 5 Ideas to Get Students Creating' by Holly Clarke https://bit.ly/3wOEpxN 

4. 'Canva for the classroom' by Betsy: https://bit.ly/2W0OHOQ

Yay! I am 'Riding the Wakelet Wave!'

I have just completed the Wakelet course on the Microsoft Educator Center 'Riding the Wakelet Wave' https://bit.ly/2TU3jyF and got my badge! I didn’t realise one could do so much with Wakelet!

What is Wakelet?

“Wakelet is a free content curation platform that allows users to save, organize, and share content from across the web.” (Microsoft Educator Center https://bit.ly/2TU3jyF

Not only do you get a badge but you also get a certificate. 

What can one do with Wakelet?

I joined Wakelet a while ago (https://wakelet.com) and up to now have been using Wakelet as a curation tool. It is a great curation tool to be sure. But during the course I discovered that I can do so much MORE with it. At first I thought Wakelet was another version of Pinterest – but now I see it is Pinterest on steroids!

• You can bookmark and create collections
• You can share these collections with others
• You can also create ‘spaces’ in your account where you can work with collaborators!
• Your students can also contribute to your Wakelet collections.

After taking a look around Wakelet and listening to some webinars, I have discovered that there are so many different ways to use Wakelet! I thought I would try out the following next term.

1. Newsletters

I like the idea of creating a collection of some weekly student work to share with the parents. I could start off with a brief description of the lesson, take a few pics of the class working (from the back of course so that no faces are visible. I could then add a few examples of good work. Maybe that could be emailed to the parents.

2. Professional Development

I could get a few great ideas together for teachers at my school and give them the link each week. I am just making a note of Pam Hubler’s first such item for future reference: https://bit.ly/2UsIXfX

3. Research

This would be a great way to teach students how to research and keep a record of their research

Professional development and a sense of community

I love the community feel of Wakelet. I have applied to join their community. 

I am following them on Twitter @wakelet https://twitter.com/wakelet . Wakelet provides free weekly webinars which they advertise on Twitter #WakeletPD . If you go to the #wakeletwave there are so many ideas about using Wakelet shared by others.

Their YouTube channel https://bit.ly/36mDD0a contains loads of useful video content – short ‘how to videos’ and webinar recordings. Whew!

Read mode and immersive reader on Wakelet

This is quite amazing. This short video explains this feature.

 

Wakelet templates

Wakelet has a bunch of templates to help one create lesson plans, newsletters, etc. etc. Head over to https://wakelet.com/@Templates and take a look.

Well, there is so much one can do with Wakelet. I can’t wait to get started. I can really recommend the course on the Microsoft Educator Center, if you are interested in finding out more. 

Further reading

Holly Clark has an excellent blogpost on using Wakeles “How to Use Wakelet in The Classroom https://bit.ly/3eharwj

How to add posts to Instagram from your Windows laptop

Recently I wanted to add a post to my Instagram from my laptop instead of my phone. It would make things a lot quicker and easier to use instagram in this way.  I originally thought this couldn't be done, but when I did an Internet search I found that it can be done! I found a really good  tutorial on a YouTube video which I've embedded below.

So the steps are:

1. In Google Chrome, go to www.instagram.com and log in on your device (assuming that you have an Instagram account on your phone.

2. You'll notice that there is no way to write a post. So right click  on the screen of your Instagram, and in the window that opens go right down to the bottom and select ‘Inspect’.

3. This opens an HTML section. Go right to the top and click on  the ‘Toggle ‘ icon. (2^nd from the left)  You’ll notice that a dot appears on your screen which is on the left.  Go to ‘Next’ at the top.

4. Refresh the page. You’ll find that  Instagram now looks like your mobile app except that the + sign is at the bottom instead of at the top.  From here you add your photo, resize it and add text.

Listen to the great explanation from @chadeveryday below: 
https://bit.ly/3ixVjM3