Over the years I’ve used Canva to create everything from simple social media graphics to websites and dozens of things in between including making short video presentations. Today, Canva introduced a new video editor that goes beyond the basics of the previous video creation options available in Canva.
Canva’s new video editor includes hundreds of video creation templates designed for school projects. All of the templates can be modified as teachers and students see fit. It’s also possible to simply build a video from scratch without using a template in Canva’s new video editor. The video editor works the same way whether you use a template or build your video from scratch. And just like the other design tools in Canva, the video editor is designed for online collaboration.
Key Features of Canva’s New Video Editor
There are a lot of things that you could do with Canva’s new video editor. Here’s a run down of the key features:
- Online collaboration. Students can invite their classmates to work on a video project remotely.
- Hundreds of templates designed for school projects.
- Millions of stock pictures, drawings, and icons.
- Large library of free music and video clips to include in video projects.
- Record new video clips within the editor and or import your own video clips into the editor.
- Videos can be downloaded as MP4 files and or published online via Canva.
How it Works
The basic framework of Canva’s video editor is that you build your video on a frame-by-frame basis much like slideshow presentation. However, each frame can be as short or as long as you want it to be and each frame can be as simple or complex as you make it. Additionally, the finished product doesn’t come across as an audio slideshow the way that videos made with other tools like Animoto or Adobe Spark appear.
Within each frame of your Canva video you can add pictures, text, video clips, and background audio. You can also add background audio to the entire video and edit that audio separately from the video frames.
Completed projects can be saved and shared in a number of ways. The simplest thing to do is to download the video as an MP4 file so that you have a local copy to share anywhere you like. Additionally, you can share your video by using one of the many sharing options built into Canva’s video editor. Those options include sharing via unique links, publishing as a simple stand-alone website, sharing to Google Drive, and grabbing an embed code to post on a blog.
Applications for Education
Canva’s new video editor could be used for all kinds of projects from 30 second personal introductions to book trailers to short documentary-style videos. As it is an online and collaborative tool, Canva’s video editor is perfect for students to use at home as well as in your classroom without having to worry about misplacing or forgetting project assets.
I gave Canva’s new video editor a first try this morning and I’d recommend it for students in grade five (age 10-11) and above. Younger students may be frustrated by it because there are so many options and it’s not immediately obvious how to use all of them.
To learn more about other ways to use Canva in your classroom, take a look at this blog post that I published last month. In that post you’ll find tutorials on using Canva to make interactive worksheets, create presentations, make infographics, create multimedia timelines, and much more.