Category: Free Inquiry

I decided to use this inquiry opportunity to create a unique way to display my reflection journal for our Link2Practice experience. Canva is something that I have always wanted to use and struggled to because I didn’t quite understand how it worked. I knew I wanted to create a mind-map to connect all the different concepts we discussed throughout my experiences at Oak Bay. When looking through all the options here is what you see:

As we can see, so many amazing templates, all colourful, fun and cool! I decided to choose a nature themed one since that related to my driving question. A few templates unfortunately were only included in the “pro” paid version, but there was lots of free options.

I then moved forward and began to customize the template. With the right click option I was able to duplicate some of the features and move them around to fit in more information.

After I duplicated and moved around all the little beige circles to where I wanted them to be, I could easily add text to each box and write in my little blurb. I found the add text box botton on the side very easily.

Though it did take a while to me to fiddle around with the settings, and some frustrations trying to fit everything in I was able to complete my final product! which looks like this:

I was pleased with how the final product came out and really like the easy to follow theme, where I was allowed to add little paragraphs in each section. While it is hard to read on here, I blew it up to submit it. Moreover, I found using canva for this project really helpful. All the templates are adjustable and you don’t have to follow it exactly. I didn’t follow the tutorial posted for us to use step by step because I couldn’t find one that was exactly realted to what I wanted to do. But I found the introductory videos super helpful to get me started, and it gave me the tools to discover the features on my own.

Students are using their phones for everything. Digital cameras are pretty much obsolete in our society except for when they’re used in an “aesthetic way”. So, we pretty much take all of our photos on our smartphones. This tutorial explained how to use the rule of thirds, control exposure, use different angles and more. Knowing how to take a good photo on your smartphone is important because you are capturing a moment and want to capture the feeling of the moment. Teaching students the skills to take better photos is important, no doubt they will have to take photos for a school project at some point. The section I found the most valuable was the video explaining the “rule of thirds”. This is a term I had heard before but didn’t fully understand. The tutorial included a small quiz in form of a google form to make sure you were fully prepared to carry on and begin taking photos. Additionally, it walked your through your phone settings to make sure all the right settings were applied.

After getting set up on my phone, I felt ready to go outside and take some pictures. I was excited to test out my camera after making some adjustments in my settings and learning some new information. I played with some different exposures and angles with my muse being a leaf. The first photo in the gallery below shows what it looks like to have the grid setting on, and how the slide option to change the exposure comes up. Can you tell which photos I put the exposure way up or way down?

I chose to use a couple of different leaves as it gave an easy object to focus on and contrasted well with the backgrounds. Emma and I did this photography lesson together, and we found that it was harder than we thought to line up the leaves nicely according to the rule of thirds, but the photos looked much better once the leaves were properly centred. I decided not to edit my photos because I was playing with the exposure during my photo taking and I didn’t want that to get lost. All in all, knowing the fundamentals of taking a good photo with your device is essential for anyone. Specifically, this lesson can also assist in the classroom setting when completing assignments that involve photos. I found another YouTube video that wasn’t in the tutorial that gave some really great and concise tips: