This last week, we were introduced to a lot of great ways to create and incorporate images into our blogs and future teaching. Microsoft designer was a spooky yet awesome way to develop new, strangely specific images that have never been seen before, and I had a fun time playing around with prompts. The header image for this post was created using this site, and it is simple but cute enough that I rate it 9/10 squeaks. The results weren’t always great quality, though, so I set off to Canva in order to make a banner for my blog.

Rats are a large part of my inspiration for my Free Inquiry blog, so I wanted the image I created to replace this element of my values. I used a random pretty sunset photo for the background and then found a few small images to include! The best two images were a rat and the chef’s hat which I was able to daintily place on his precious little head.

The people in the picture weren’t going to show up in the header image anyways so I just left them be. I allowed WordPress to crop the top part, and voila! New header image achieved.

Canva, Microsoft Designer and the many resources like them all have great potential in our classrooms. Particularly in the case of Canva and similar tools, these sites give students the opportunity to create, design and present information (which is relevantly the top of Bloom’s taxonomy). Our classrooms are also gaining more and more online elements due to sites like Google classroom, and already I’ve noticed teachers asking students to “take pictures” of their physical assignments and upload them onto these classroom sites. Canva’s pregenerated templates erases a lot of the time needed to create an equally beautiful paper version, so it would ultimately give students more time to focus on the content they’re working with rather than the difficulties associated with organizing it. This, of course, can remove some of the creativity hands-on projects involve, but for struggling students who struggle to do the bare minimum, these sites promise much-needed assistance that enhances their learning experiences.

Header image created by Microsoft Designer