This is a guest post by one of our teacher-authors, Katherine Miller.
Once you fall in love with designing for your classroom using Canva, you will find there is really NOTHING you can’t use this website to create. And, with all that creating, you will quickly may find that your content will start adding up making your drive within the Canva website a little more challenging to navigate.
However, I have 3 quick tips you can use to get control of your content and keep it organized so you can continue to design for many school years to come. These tips are not quick fixes but are well worth the effort!
#1: Organize your Designs into Folders
To begin the clean-up of your Canva drive, start by creating folders. Canva allows users with a free account to create up to two folders. Pro accounts (including free educator accounts) can have an unlimited number of folders.
To create a folder:
- Navigate to “Your Projects” on the menu on the left-hand side of your screen
- Then, click the + sign in the top right corner and choose “Folder”
- Type a name for the folder
- Add team members (if needed) who need to access items in the folder
- Create subfolders inside by repeating the directions within each folder you have created.
Once your folders are created, you can quickly move the designs you have previously made into each of them by selecting them to move all at once.
Here’s a video to show you how: (click the image below)!
#2: Tackle your Content
Canva automatically creates a folder for all of the content you upload, like pictures, movies, and icons, but if you regularly create content from this website that folder can be a HUGE mess of literally everything you have ever added, or uploaded, to the site. In order to continue your drive clean-up, you can move your uploaded content into the folders you have created, too.
To move your uploaded content:
- Navigate to “Your projects” on the menu on the left hand side of your screen
- Click on the “Uploads” folder
- Select the content you want to move
- Choose the folder icon that appears at the bottom of the screen
- Choose the appropriate folder
As you take the time to reorganize your content, it can be helpful to give your content, and even your designs, recognizable and memorable file names. These file names can be used in the future to easily access any content that you are looking for to add to a future design.
#3: Use the Star Feature
Did you know Canva allows you to save any of the elements from their huge gallery so you can easily locate it later? This is a great feature you can use to further organize your drive and make creating in the future that much easier, especially if you are working with a theme or design that is similar for many different projects.
To save any element within the Canva website, you will want to star it.
To “star” an element in Canva:
- Locate the element
- Click the three dots in the top right corner of the element that appear when it is in the elements menu
- Click on “Star” to turn it yellow
Any elements you star will be saved into another folder automatically created by Canva titled “Starred” but you can also choose to organize them into any other folder that you have created.
For instance, I use this same shape for all of the logos I create for my classroom. I can star it within the elements menu and then save it to a folder with my classroom logos in order to easily find it when I have a reason to create a new one.
Any template included within Canva can also be “starred” and saved this way, too!
Benefits of an Organized Drive
Although these 3 steps seem pretty simple, the benefits of taking the time to organize your Canva drive don’t just stop at the visual appearance. There are actually a few more benefits to have organized content on Canva that you can start to use once you have an organized drive.
The first benefit is being able to easily save new designs into the system you have created.
To save new designs into your folders:
- Click “Share” in the top left hand corner of the design screen (ie: the same place where you would usually click to download your media)
- Choose “More”
- Choose “Save to folder”
An organized drive also allows you to search for folders in order to easily add content to new designs. You can navigate to them right from the design screen by using the right-hand menu to locate the folder you need.
This is also a time when those file names can come in handy because you can also use the search bar to find content within your folders.
Lastly, if you need to add a new folder, you do not need to navigate out of a new design. Instead, you can create a new folder from the same “Folders” menu (pictured above) and choose “ + Create new”.
Final Thoughts
Remember—you don’t have to get it all organized at one time!
A great place to start might be with 1 folder or 1 type of content.
Set a timer for yourself and just allot that much time to making a dent in the process.
Or, it might be easiest to begin by adding your newest media creations to a folder immediately to start the process.
What strategy do you like to use when tackling a big job like getting your Canva drive cleaned up? Drop a comment below!
More Blogs About Canva from Midnight Music
- 9 Exciting Canva Updates for Teachers
- How to Design Your Classroom Theme in Canva
- 5 MORE Cool Canva Tricks for Designing Teacher Resources
- How to Use Canva to Merge Technology Standards and Content Standards
- Our Top 10 Keyboard Shortcuts for Canva for Teachers
- How to Use Canva to Create Your Teachers Pay Teachers Products and Store
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About Katherine Miller
Katherine (Katie) Miller holds a Bachelor of Music in Education degree from Otterbein University (Westerville, OH) and a Masters of Educational Leadership from Antioch McGregor Midwest (Yellow Springs, OH). She has 15 years of professional musical experience as a music educator and performer.
She resides in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area where she teaches K-5 General Music and serves as a district model tech classroom. She was recognized in 2018 as a WPT Education Innovator by the Wisconsin Public Television Education team. Twitter: K8TMiller
Looking for More Resources for Music Teachers?
Hello! I’m Katie Argyle – an Australian music technology trainer and consultant with a passion for helping music teachers through my business Midnight Music.
I’m a qualified teacher but no, I don’t currently teach in a school. I help teachers through my online professional development space – the Midnight Music Community – where there are tutorial videos, courses, links and downloadable resources.
I like to focus on easy ways to incorporate technology into what you are already doing in your music curriculum through a range of creative projects. I also run live workshops and have presented at countless conferences and other music education events.
If you want simple, effective ideas for using technology in music education, I would LOVE to help you inside the Midnight Music Community.
