I’m going to show you everything that you need to know about Canva presentations and why you should start using it in your class.
As always, before we get started, I’d like to say a big thank you to my current members; thank you so much for joining and helping me produce more content like this.
Canva is a great tool for teachers; it’s got templates to make things like lesson plans and worksheets, and I even made a post on its own whiteboard which is just right here.
But today, we’re talking about Canva presentations, so let’s get started.
Choosing a template
Once you’ve made an account on Canva, you can do this using your email address or your Google account. At the homepage, you’ll be presented with a lot of options on what to do next, things like making a document, a whiteboard, and here we have presentations. We’ve got at the moment these five different options. We can even make one that’s suitable for phones; you can make one just slightly changing the aspect ratio, and two templates, which are brainstorm presentations and a game presentations. So a game presentation is going to be a template where there’s going to be lots of different kinds of questions like multiple-choice or single-answer questions, depending on what kind of presentation you want to do in class.
Choosing a Canva design
Today, we’re going to be working with standard presentations. So just go to create a blank one, and once it’s loaded, if we go to the left-hand side, you can see all the possible designs that we could use or take for our own presentation. You could even search for a type of presentation. I’m using a free account; there are obviously pro versions of Canva, the little crown means it’s Pro. Once we choose a design that we like the look of, we can then decide to either add one, two, or all pages of that presentation.
Customising the presentation
As I said earlier, this is just a template, and we can change this to fit our students’ needs. So we can either delete whole slides or we can go into a page and we can start editing the text. Apart from the text, we also have these elements. If we want to add new elements to the slide, we just go to the left-hand side and go to element. We can search for any kind of icon, graphic, lines, arrows, anything you want, and add those to our presentation.
Copying slides from one presentation to another
Let’s imagine you’ve started designing your presentation in Canva, but then you see on the left-hand side another design that you really like and you’d like to kind of steal some slides and copy them over to your original presentation.
To do this, I’m just going to go to the bottom right-hand corner and go to grid view and now I can see all the slides that are in this presentation. Using control-click I can select two slides. All I’m going to do is go to control C, let’s go back to my original presentation again, click on the bottom right-hand corner on grid view, press control V, and those two slides will now be pasted inyo my original presentation.
Adding music to a Canva presentation
One of the things that I like to do when I’m making a presentation in Canva is to add audio or music. So to find this, we just go to the left-hand side and go to audio. We have a selection of songs, some are paid and some are free. I drag and drop the song into the presentation and the length matches the duration of the presentation. If I present this, we should be able to hear the song playing alongside the presentation exactly. That song will continue for the whole presentation; you can even add different music during the presentation to change the rhythm or the mood of your presentation.
Adding video to a Canva presentation
A great way to increase student engagement is to add video to your presentation. So to do this, we’re going to go to apps and we’re going to add videos via YouTube. So we’re going to go to the YouTube Canva app and start searching for videos. Again, all you need to do is drag and drop it.
Recording videos into a Canva presentation
While adding videos from YouTube is a great idea to give it a more personal touch, you could appear in the presentation yourself. To do this, we’re just going to go to the left-hand side and go to videos, and it’s going to have an option at the very top that says “record yourself.”
Once we are in the studio, we can choose which kind of webcam we want to use, whether we want to choose a different microphone, or we could just turn off the camera just by clicking on here, which means you’re just going to be recording the audio from your voice.
When you’ve finished your recording it will be applied to this slide only. If I go to duration at the bottom, the slide lasts not 5 seconds like the others but now 9.1 seconds. If I wanted to just simply add my voice, I could do the same thing, go to the recording studio, and just turn off my camera and just start speaking.
Recording an entire Canva presentation
What I just showed you was how to add video and audio, especially video, to individual slides. If you’d like to present the whole presentation and record yourself, then we can do that too. So to do that, we’re just going to go to present in the top right-hand corner and choose “present and record.”
So again, we got the same options; we can choose what kind of camera you want to use, what kind of mic we want to use. If you would not like to appear in the video, then you’re just going to click on no camera, and then you’re going to disappear. I can move through the slides, continue speaking, and give more insights into each slide like this.
If you find this whole process a bit daunting, you could always add notes to your design. Once the recording is ready, we’ve got a link we can share directly with other people that are in the audience. We can do this, and they don’t have to sign in and make an account on Canva, or we could even download it right here and send this either through an LMS or by email.
Finding your Canva recording
Now here’s a little tip for you. If you have saved an exited from your presentation after presenting and recording, and you’d like to go find your recording, then you’re going to need to go back to the original presentation and go to present and present and record again, and you’ll see the link again and the option to download it. Now if we’d like to remove this and start a new presentation and recording, then we’re just going to go to delete recording.
Using your phone as a remote control
Another great feature when using Canva presentations live in class is to use your mobile phone as a kind of remote control. When we’re back on our presentation, we’re going to go to present and we’re going to go to present full screen and we’re going to go to the more button right here and go to share remote control. We have a QR code on the screen; take your phone and scan this. I can now just press left, right, right, and I can move through the slides really easily, and I don’t have to keep tapping the arrow keys or moving back towards the computer. I can do everything from my phone while presenting.
Canva’s “magic shortcuts”
Let me show you something else that’s really cool. While still on my phone, at the very top, you can see here we got something called Magic shortcuts, and these shortcuts can be also accessed on the keyboard. These are seven different shortcuts to do something fun on the presentation screen.
- So for example, confetti, confetti just appearing all over the screen! So imagine that you would like to share some news with your students; then this is a great way to celebrate that.
- We’ve also got drum roll, and again, if you’re going to give some exciting news, you could use this.
- You’ve got the veil and unveil, so we can pull the curtains across and press it again then we can maybe share something exciting for your students.
- We’ve then got mic drop, so if you’ve made a really good point in class as the teacher or as a student.
- Bubbles, not really too sure how I’d use this!
- If you’ve got students that don’t shut up, you could use the quiet button.
- And we’ve got the blur as well, so for example, if you’d like to hide something, you can use this to.
- Now, there is another shortcut that is not available on your phone, which is to add a timer. To do this, we’re going to use the keyboard, and every number we press is going to produce a timer for that number. So for example, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes, 6 minutes. This can be really useful for helping you as the teacher control how long you’re speaking for.
Sharing your Canva presentation
A key point to cover right now is how you share your presentation with other teachers, with your students once you’re finished. To do this, it’s really simple with Canva, we just go to the share button in the top right-hand corner, and it’s going to give us lots of different options.
Microsoft and Canva Presentations
If you’ve been using audio or video in your presentations, then the best option for you is to download it as an MP4 video. If you are a Microsoft PowerPoint person we’re going to go to share, download and scroll down to Microsoft PowerPoint document.
Google Slides and Canva Presentations
If you’re a Google person like me then I’m sorry. There’s not much compatibility available between Canva and Google Slides. If we do want to send it to our Google Drive we will just go to share, Google Drive and it’s then going to ask us to connect our accounts. Choose a folder that we’d like to use and save it as either PDF a PNG. Don’t save it as a pptx which is Powerpoint because when you open it in Google Slides all the text and elements are going to be all over the place
SlidesGo is a great library of Google slides template. I would recommend watching this video here.
If you would like your notes to appear in whatever format of the Canva presentation you download then we’re going to go, download and where it says include notes we’re going to make sure this is ticked. This will work for whatever format you choose.
I hope you use Canva presentations in your class and I think this is a great option for teachers who tend to use presentation tools.