As the title indicates, Canva IS my new best friend. I'm not sure what I did without it. I have created so many flyers and posters, and they all look great - way better than I could ever do. The beauty of Canva is you get a free educational account when you register with your school email. That unlocks all of the templates & features without having to pay their monthly/yearly fee, and there are A LOT of templates & features. There are templates for presentations, social media, flyers, worksheets, brochures, videos, marketing and more. I know I have just barely touched the surface of what this program can do, but I love it.
With the educational account, you can download your creations as a PNG, a PDF, or just get a link to send a digital version wherever. I use the link when I am adding the flyers to my monthly activity calendar.
Example Calendar (click on Nov. 5th & Nov. 17th for Canva samples)
There is also a feature which allows collaborators to edit the project. I have not done that yet, but it looks like a handy feature to have during group work in a classroom. You can also set up your creation as a template for others to use. I use that feature with my Potty PD flyers (see previous blog post for explanation of Potty PD) that I put in the faculty restrooms. I then share those with the other high school and middle school librarians so they don't have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.
All of your creations are stored on the Canva homepage when you first log in. For those of us who are a bit OCD and need to organize, you can create folders and assign your creations to different folders, which really comes in handy when you have tons of flyers, posts, etc. I can't say enough good things about Canva. If you have not already created an account, you are missing out.
Here are just a few of my creations that I have either printed out or used digitally to help out with a book display, a library activity, or my monthly calendars.
Do yourself a favor. Create a Canva account today. You won't regret it. If you are one of those people who are visual and don't want to dive right in without a brief introduction, here are a few videos to get you started. The best thing about these is they are super short - nothing more than 3 minutes.
Canva is my best friend, and it will soon be yours too!
