Deploying Canva Across Multiple Schools

Digital implementation has become a necessary step for schools and trusts in the current landscape. With a focus on ensuring that schools are providing pupils with sufficient skills they need for their futures, alongside an already packed curriculum, it’s becoming increasingly important to grow an offer for pupils that not only provides them with a toolkit for the future but also allows them to continue to be the creative individuals that they can be. Digital implementation, like any implementation, needs to be cautious of not overburdening staff whilst providing them with up-to-date tools and opportunities to explore these tools. Carefully crafting a toolkit that includes a select handful of tools is essential in making sure that any implementation is successful. Our strategy and implementation process has been based around Dr. Fiona Aubrey-Smith’s From Edtech to PedTech and is captured in Higgins’ (et al, 2012) approach: ‘it is the pedagogy of use of technology which is important: the how rather than the what’.

Deploying Canva: Our Story

Canva has become a staple tool at Epping Forest Schools Partnership Trust - we’re 15 primary schools and one special school who are on a journey of EdTech change. Canva’s rise in education could not have come at a better time for us and was almost immediately written into our strategy to focus on supporting creative outcomes which neatly ties into Canva’s mission statement to ‘empower the world to create’.

In 1998, ODB stormed the stage at the Grammys and proclaimed ‘Wu-Tang is for the children’. A simple message, but a message about always having your eyes on the future. Although it’s not a conventional approach to education, it’s a message that has always stayed with me and in the legacy of any strategy I implement, these words are scripture. For me as a leader, implementing Canva ‘is for the children’.

Quick Wins

One of the most powerful wins, which cemented the love of Canva across our schools, took place at our special school. For a long time, PDFs have been an issue, especially for those wanting to be able to edit them easily. A question was raised around how Canva could accommodate PDFs; in the training session, we explored this and found that we could edit PDFs and finally, for the special school, adapt and change their PECs (visual communication). These little wins then allow the success of implementation to grow more naturally.

Implementation

Canva has become a firm favourite in our schools. Here’s how we were able to implement the tool into our schools using the four phases of the EEF Implementation Cycle:

Explore Stage

I always explore technology fairly cautiously and live by Ty Goddard’s words: “Don’t get engrossed or mesmerised by the product” (X, 2022) so to successfully bring in a new tool, especially on a wide scale, needs a careful amount of exploration. Here are some key steps whilst we

were in the explore phase:

Evidence Review & Resource Audit

Analyse existing ‘tools’ - what tools are we using that are already similar? What can it replace? (And most importantly) What is the purpose?

Research

Whatever tool we implement, we do our best to research and start with some of the following basics to help us get more a feel of how a tool, like Canva, is being implemented elsewhere:

• Review what others are doing.

• Get involved in communities and social media to see ‘best practices’.

• Look out for Canva events to join discussions with passionate educators already using it.

• Visit schools already using the tools.

Avoid staying in your silos!

Stakeholder Engagement

Consult teachers, middle leaders and students to gather diverse perspectives on the impact of the current tools and suggestions for improvement. 

Identify a school, department or team to trial using Canva.

Prepare Stage

Moving into the prepare stage takes some careful steps, but most significantly, it’s about planning and landing the implementation at the right time or moment.

Planning & Timing

For us, Canva’s deployment came at a time of many technological changes. This shifts to a new focused toolkit of resources and works alongside our other tools. As a Trust, we’ve never been ones to force a new tool or approach but rather allow for the usage to grow naturally. Our planned approach focused on slowly incorporating Canva demos across various meetings and demoing ideas of how it could work within the classroom in staff meetings and INSETs across a range of staff.

Technical setup

Getting the technical setup right can make things much easier when using Canva. As a medium-sized Trust, we had to set ourselves up as a ‘district’ and use SSO (single sign-on) to enable all of our users to get on.

• SSO: This option is ideal for schools or trusts that have more than 20 domains.

• Deploying Canva through Google Admin: a straightforward way of accessing via the Google admin console but only available for schools with less the 20 domains.

We did have some hiccups along the way, but it all comes down to reading the guidance carefully, which Canva offers a lot of, having the correct access and ensuring the proper things are enabled and that the platform you are using is talking to Canva correctly. 

Deliver Stage

Training

Training has been essential in the implementation of Canva. We’ve tiered how to implement these foundational approaches to help empower our staff to direct how it’s used within their school:

• Trust wide training opportunities which have allowed all teachers to hear the same message and see the power of the tools.

• School-based training sessions - a series of sessions which go into more depth on tools. Less is more; remembering that the most effective CPD is focused on doing less but doing them well. We now offer an introductory session, a session focused on Canva AI and a creative session focused on using Canva for school marketing.

• Using the tools often across meetings to ‘sell’ it’s use. The Canva whiteboard has become an easily accessible tool to get conversations going in many meetings.

Most recently, we hosted a Digital Leader Academy - a day that we bring all of our digital leaders together in one school. This year 120 pupils spent a day together creating content in Canva. The scale at which we were able to achieve only further invested our staff in the power of such a tool and how quickly our pupils could pick it and use it creatively. 

Any CPD should have some degree of reference to pedagogically-led approaches. For me, delivering the CPD, I apply the principles Quinlan (2014) outlines:

Start with what you want [staff] to learn, design an experience that will cause them to learn it, build in some checks [...] along the way.”

CPD can make or break it!

Sustain Stage

I’ll keep this section light - but, simply, share the best practice. Give opportunities to share practice in staff meetings, in emails, in school updates and anywhere else staff go to see resources. Showcase what’s going on and how well Canva is being embedded!

Our journey to implementing Canva has taken time but by doing so, we have ensured that by starting with careful exploration and evidence review, moving through meticulous planning and technical setup, then into delivering targeted training, and finally, sustaining adoption by sharing best practices, the Trust has successfully embedded Canva. This thoughtful approach has ensured that staff are empowered and the tool is effectively integrated into educational practices, enhancing creative outcomes for students. The ongoing focus on pedagogical approaches and continual sharing of successes will further solidify Canva as a staple tool within the Trust's schools.