1) A short summary of your learning. What resources did you look at? Why?

2) Knowledge you gained - what is new? What confirmed what you are already doing? Did anything challenge you?

3) How will what you learned impact student learning? What do you do next? What are your ideas for your creations?

I have been able to use the presentation features within canva that I have not used before. I usually use Canva as a worksheet maker, poster, or task activity maker. I think learning all the tools that canva has to offer using the magic tools will give me an opportunity to make my students learning more engaging. I am hoping that once I learn more about them by using that it will become easier.

I think my students will be more engaged and enjoy presentations and lessons more because of the visuals this program will provide. I want to look at my life skills class and use this to create more engagin lessons.

2) The info that was new to me was using Canva as a place to write reflections. To me this seems like more of a poster/presentation kind of place, so I liked that fact that there are ways to reflect on artwork and templates for that. The challenge for me is we already spend so much time on the students reflections in their digital portfolio using Google Slides, I don't know if I want to introduce Canva into that and make it more complex.

3). I'm still brainstorming about what I can have the students do in Canva that not only relates to their current portfolios but also doesn't eat up days and days of curriculum time. I want students to create something in Canva that is new/different/ creative but also useful to them. I might do something with the Animation tool from one of their existing drawings, but I'm still thinking about that.

3. I would like to be able to take math equations and utilize them to create real math/ world problems.  The end goal is to have students more engaged in recognizing and seeing the correlation between equations and real life experience.  I think students will enjoy using AI to see the benefits of what they are learning and knowing it can be applied or how it can be applied to real world situations. I think Magic Write is the place to start with this.

2) I was not aware that Canva was capable of using AI to basically be photoshop/photo editor! I think that that tool can be exciting when creating a specific visual for any kind of unit. I already knew about being able to layer and use templates! I am challenging myself to try using Canva for daily slides rather than GoogleSlides because of how many new features they have - including how easy it is to add videos, visuals, and movement.

3) I think having more interesting slides will be more exciting for my students. Adding in videos and movement can help enhance what I am teaching on without struggling to maneuver the GoogleSlides videos (my smartboard HATES videos that are embedded into a slideshow). Since I use slides daily, I think this will be an easier way to subtly boost my levels of engagement. I'm planning on making slides for a lesson on Canva and then expanding to a week or month/rest of year if I like it!

I think doing this again, I would maybe give them specific algebra problems, rather than have them create one. It was great to see how students could make sense of the "why" behind problems and that algebra is used to solve many problems, complex or not. One of the challenges was just the navigating exponents and to input that.

Within the Magic designs for presentation section of the article I was able to access a quick tutorial on how to best tailor my prompts in AI to get my desired outcomes. I tried having Canva AI create a few presentations for some of our health topics and with some quick tweaking I had a useable presentation to use a teaching tool for a lesson.

My plan is to use some of the tools within Canva AI to have student amp up an activity, that I currently already do. My idea is that they will take a creation they make in a nutrition activity and bring it to life with Canva AI.

I knew a lot of what the website had to offer...I just haven't created projects on it other than slide show presentations and the various worksheet. The biggest take away was the reminder of limitless capabilities that Canva has to offer. I think my biggest hurdle/challenge with incorporating a Canva project into my lesson would be how to give my students creative freedom, but also set parameters to ensure work completion is done...I could see how students could easily go down a rabbit hole with of all the features because I certainly did! Since I only see the kids for 30 mins at a time, teaching them 'how' to use the app would/could take all of the lesson.

I think there's still some learning on my end that needs to happen before I try a project out with my students. Since I did all trying on my laptop, seeing how things function on my iPad would be the next step. A project that comes to mind is for students to make a poster (maybe about a composer, artist, or instrument). Something where they can at least get the basics down (adding text, images, changing fonts/backgrounds).

2) I discovered the text-to-image feature, which I found to be an awesome addition to my toolkit. Most of the AI functionalities were new to me, as I had previously only considered AI in the context of ChatGPT or Magic School. I was impressed with the various image AI options available in Canva. However, I realized that integrating AI into my workflow is not my first thought, which presents a challenge I need to overcome.

3) I plan to implement what I've learned in the classroom. I do think when used correctly can help kids with their creativity. The tough part is students still need to know what to input into the AI to have it generate something that is well done.

Lindsey Schartner created a template for our 8th grade ELA team that included Plot Peak terms (Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action and Resolution), and students had to use Magic Media (Canva AI) to create images that matched the story "Unknown Americans," then fill in text boxes to describe the part of the plot peak shown in the image.

This impacted student learning because it gave students a more engaging and creative way to show their learning of a standard - rather than answer a question by JUST typing a response, they were able to add a visual representation to show their understanding of the story.

The struggles were:

1) Being able to FIND the AI tools in Canva - still a struggle. Not sure why they're not readily available.

2)The link we had for students to get a Pro Account to USE the AI tools became "full." Luckily, Lindsey was able to swoop in and give us another link!

Overall, they seem to be having a lot of fun "creating" the pictures. I also hoped it got them thinking more about different career options and that they CAN do something with music when they're older other than being a teacher or performer.

Now I had them do the same assignment but then they went to CANVA AI and punched in their final menu and it displayed an AI generated photo of their sandwich meal. They definitely brought this assignment to life and the next level. Kids had a lot of fun with this. What we ultimately did at the end of class was had a gallery walk with everyone looking at everyone's sandwich creation. Probably not the best assignment to do just before lunch. Definitely will continue doing this assignment this way with the addition of CANVA AI.

2. I was able to experiment with all of the resources that Canva has to offer related to AI. One that I found particularly interesting was the image generator and how it can produce images simply based on a prompt. These images were very interesting because sometimes they were not that accurate. For example, some of the images that I generated had writing on it, but some of the smaller text was not anything that made sense, misspelled words or oddly drawn letters.

3. I am able to take my learning from this course and teach students some of the AI features that Canva has to offer. The AI tools that I learned about will provide students with opportunities to be more creative (text to image generation) and to use AI to help with their writing. One thing that I would like to warn students about regarding AI is that it is not always the most accurate, so having them double check the work that AI does is an important part of using the AI tools.

1) After reading the article, I looked primarily at the videos from canva detailing how to use the different tools, and how to use them most effectively. I was mostly interested in how to make a presentation more engaging for students and more tailored to whatever subject I am teaching, which I will definitely be able to do with the magic media and animate features.

2) I am MUCH more comfortable with using the canva suite now, particularly the AI features. I had never created anything (such as background images) by giving AI directions, and discovered you have to be very clear or you are going to get some wacky pictures....so figuring out how to word things correctly was challenging. I also haven't quite figured out in what context I will use magic write yet, however I now understand how to use it.

3) Now that I am more comfortable using the tools, I hope to go further into the different ways in which to utilize them. One of the videos discussed creating a reflection tool for the students, and that is something I would definitely like to utilize as an exit ticket. I also would like to use the platform to create quick worksheets as warm ups.

2. The students were very engaged with making the poster because they wanted to see the images AI would make. Many students liked using Canva and the many features. Some students tried other AI features and some students wanted to make the poster on PIC EDU because they are more comfortable with it.

3. I had one student that could not get the AI to make a picture from his text. It just kept loading and loading. We delated the Canva app and redownloaded the app and then it worked.

To remedy this, I used a photoshop-like app that is in canva called DALL-E. This app was simple to use and I could easily mirror my iPad to the smartboard to show the step by step process. First, I had students come up and pick one place or activity from one bucket of prompt and pick an animal from another. Together it created the prompt they would type into DALL-E. Examples would be: a moose on a surfboard, a snake in the library, a chinchilla doing ballet, etc. .After students typed in their prompt, DALL-E pushed out an AI created image. They then added it to a Canva document and sent it to me like they would any other assignment on Canva. It was so simple and my kids LOVED the pictures. DALL-E pushed out 2 images for each prompt and they got to pick their favorites. I later compiled them into one document for easier printing. Here is the link to view those:

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGgHmHQ_Xg/Oyi77QVIUyZuLo2N0PyFmA/view?utm_content=DAGgHmHQ_Xg&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h38803f0957

Once I printed those out, I asked students to use their image to practice their imaginative writing skills during their small group writing time. ALL of my students - even the ones who notoriously hate writing- were so excited to write about their picture. I had kids asking to come in from recess to work on their writing. Honestly, their writing still needs work. They still struggle to make a cohesive plot and resolve conflict in their writing but I didn't expect this activity to fix that. I was so excited that my class (who normally dislike writing) were eager to write. The majority of my students wrote not just the bare minimum, but multiple PAGES of writing.

Later next week, during library, we are going to read some of our amazing AI inspired creations to our Librarian/Media Specialist since she helped me create the canva classroom they put their AI images into. My entire class is excited to share the stories they wrote and even more excited to share the pictures that were created!

I did not face many challenges - the biggest was just how to get the Canva classroom set up for easy submissions from my students. Our library media specialist was a huge help in guiding me through that. Overall, I plan to use this again during the year and my students ask to use it for writing time. I'm glad to have tried it!

2. I was shocked how fast Canva could generate a presentation! However, I think I would only find myself using this feature for more general ELA topics such as grammar or figuartive language. Using the HMH curriculum, sometimes out content is very specific, so it would require a lot of editing. However, I would enjoy generating unique and engaging themes for students! I also tried out generating settings and characters in Magic Media.

3. I could see myself using the Magic Media in my class a lot, specifically with fictional texts. I like how students can create visuals for characters, settings, etc. through this. I remember doing an activity like this when I was a kid, but we had to hand draw everything. I think it would be awesome for them to compare their ideas and how their images turn out.

For this assignment, students will need to pick 1 of 4 characters and generate images of them based on the descriptions the author provides. I am hoping the description of their actions and feelings will help generate a more acurate image. Depending on how that goes, I might have them generate the setting as well. I did the setting as an example up above.

While we haven't done this yet, the activity will be completed next week as we discuss character development.

There were neat features, but it seemed that the only added benefit at this point would be for aesthetic purposes. The AI create math content was iffy, and the formatting needed a lot of edits. I am sure that it would be better with better inputs from me. I knew that Canva would add to my presentations aesthetically. I am challenged in seeing ways to use this to truly improve lessons in a high school math classroom at this point.

I need to do more learning and become more comfortable to see any direct application into the classroom beyond having the students creating some kind of review visual. I am not sure how I will use this in my classroom.

In the short time I have been using these new features I have been able to improve work that I already have done. In addition, I am thinking about how I will be applying this to the slides and instruction I am developing as I move forward. 

Right away I think this will benefit my students two fold. The first is by improving my current creations it will increase engagement and understanding of my lessons. Second, the resources and knowledge I learned I will be able to pass on to them as well and they will be able to create more engaging and well developed products.

It was challenging and I spent most of my time on the first 2 slides. They others were untouched. I'm not proficient in Canva and it would take a lot of time to become a Pro to make time managements better.

The knowledge that I gained was that this is has powerful applications for engaging students in their learning. Their accountability for creating relevant products activates their learning by demonstrating their knowledge at a higher level.

The impact that this will have on student learning is that students will have an interactive and engaging tool to represent their learning, engaging higher DOK level of thinking, and provide them with creative possibilities that allow them to express their thinking and their perspective of a variety of topics, academic and creative. My idea at this point is to have students create a visual representation for a station along the Trail of Tears. Each of 7 stations has a specific focus, questions and a small reading. Synthesizing all of this, students would create a visual representation of that particular step in the trail, including perhaps maps, photographs, hardships, pain, rejection, etc.