Reflection 3: Presentations

 Canva is a presentation tool I have recently been exploring to benefit myself as a teacher and students as learners. From my experience, in almost all instances, a teacher will use a presentation tool such as PowerPoint or Google Slides to present weekly content on a whiteboard while they teach. Similarly, students will commonly use PowerPoint to present their culminated portfolios or present narrated assessment. In these cases, presentations are used to educate, narrate and persuade simultaneously. The great thing about these technologies is the ability to embed media such as images, video and audio to make them more engaging and support their purpose.

Other benefits of this technology is the ability to access information instantaneously if shared by the teacher. As a teacher, I would find it beneficial to upload weekly presentations into a shared space in case students have been absent from the classroom or need to revise content. I would also see the benefits in using presentations to explain a particularly challenging concept or explain assessment, alike our experiences as CQUniversity students.

Canva is a free to use website in which presentations can be created. What’s more is that you can create your own media on the website to import into your presentation (video, infographics, QR code) or import external media such as YouTube videos, audio and images. Other benefits include:

-          Highly customisable presentations with a range of professional templates, supported graphics and design elements

-          User-centred accessibility (no experience needed. Tutorials available on website if needed)

-          Ability to share across various other digital platforms

-          Similar abilities to other presentation software, making the creating process familiar

-          Ability to create a Canva Team. This is a collaborative, shared space where you can invite team members and ‘assign tasks, leave feedback, share designs’, design together, post comments, invite up to 3000 members, organise projects and control user permissions.

To create anything on Canva you need to sign up and login with a password. When sharing presentations, you can either make it viewable to selected people, or make it publicly accessible with a link for privacy and safety. Canva has an abundance of free photos, music and video files that can be used for free commercial and non-commercial use. Any other uploaded media students/teachers use in presentations must be acknowledged appropriately to meet legal and ethical guidelines. A limitation is the ability to save unfinished work to local file storage. This means if the website was down, you would need to wait for it to go online again to continue creating.

To view my mock presentation, click here > https://www.canva.com/design/DAE-Hs-qzBU/lYypV5XiQUt9n6sK-66pFQ/view?utm_content=DAE-Hs-qzBU&utm_campaign=share_your_design&utm_medium=link&utm_source=shareyourdesignpanel

I created a mock assessment intro presentation for a media arts class.

It was quite simple to create the presentation. First, I selected a template and was provided with a range of layout prompts to choose for each slide. I could easily add and edit text and alter slide positioning. There was also the ability to write notes in presenter mode if I needed to.

A feature I did enjoy was the “elements” tab, where I could customise my slides using graphics, photos and shapes that applied to the style of the template.

I then went and recorded my voice-over. Once recorded, I was given the option to share with specific viewers, or provide a link for anyone to watch. 

Below is a table of how Canva Presentations could be used through the SAMR Model.

Redefinition	Students utilise the Canva teams function to redefine their creations. In a collaborative group, students’ comment, action and share in an online space to progress their creations. Students may wish to share their work within the school community by creating a Canva QR code or share publicly on Canva to communicate with other creators.
Modification	Students use time restrictions and voice-overs to further modify their presentations past an augmented level. This stage requires practice, awareness of time, content and structure.
Augmentation	Students present an idea using Canva presentations. Students would focus on creating titled slides and content, assisted with Canva provided images/graphics/audio.
Substitution	Instead of answering written questions using paragraphs, students use Canva presentations to share their answers on a basic level. Students would focus on creating titled slides with their answers.