Canva: Design Anything - Publish Anywhere

If you are a big fan of 'free' like I am, then checking out Canva for Education is a must. Canva’s free education account is mind-blowing. Canva’s platform brings graphic design and online publication to the next level. Teachers and students can choose from thousands of templates (presentations, posters, one-page documents, graphic organizers, just to name a few). This list highlights 75 of the most popular Canva templates. Once a template is selected, users can search from over 1 million free images to add to their design. Canva’s simple drag and drop interface make designing that perfect poster easier than ever.

Students can also share their designs with their classmates or teacher as view only documents, or, they can give their peers editing rights to collaborate.

I recommend signing in with your Google account for seamless integration. The signup process is very straight forward. You can complete the signup process in 1-2 minutes.

All of your Canva designs are saved in your Canva cloud for easy access from any device. You can download your finished design, save it to your Google Drive, share with others, post your design on social media, or send it off to your favorite photo printing service.



You will want to check out Canva’s awesome library of online tutorials. Their video tutorials are a collection of 1-minute videos that walk you through everything from starting your design from scratch to publishing your completed design.



Yes, the 1-minute videos are excellent, however, I suggest starting with Canva’s interactive tutorials. Assign these 3-minute step-by-step tutorials to your students, or adults in a technology training you might be running as an introduction to the product. The interactive tutorials are exactly what will be needed to teach your audience the necessary skills to get started. The interactive tutorial titled Canva starter challenge should be assigned to each and every user before turning them loose with Canva.



If you would like to take your graphic design skills to the next level, check out Canva’s free Design School. There are several courses to choose from, with each course chunked up into easy to digest mini-lessons.



One of my favorite podcasts, How I Built This with Guy Raz, featured an episode on Canva’s founder Melanie Perkins. Listen to how a 19-year-old Australian started her business with a small online yearbook company and then followed her vision to create a free online publishing tool that is currently valued at over 1 billion dollars.