From the Depth of the Sea to Far Reaches of Space and Some Minecraft Saving Advice

​This week I am excited to share a silly, fun website which takes you on a space elevator to the far reaches of the universe.  Put on your space suit and cue up the elevator music (yes, you can click to hear it in your elevator) and enjoy: https://neal.fun/space-elevator/​ I looked a little further and discovered that the same people also made a trip through the depth of the deep sea: https://neal.fun/deep-sea/​

​​Saving your Minecraft World to Avoid Losing It:

Minecrafters out there may have noticed that your Minecraft world is only on the computer that you create it on-it is very computer specific.  We recommend exporting your worlds at the end of every class to ensure that if something happens to the computer you started on you can still import your world and open it on another computer (thank you Paul for this one)​.

Click here for instructions for how to import and export your Minecraft world.

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Earth Week Ideas and 2 Great Websites

In honour of Earth Week I have two great websites (programs) to share with you and a great opportunity to try out Minecraft Frozen Planet with a free online live lesson from Cobblestone Collective.  
​Sierra Club BC:
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I used to have the Sierra Club come in and do amazing workshops with my classes (for free) when I worked at NIDES and I loved it.  They also offer online learn to draw lessons which I hear are fabulous (thank you Christa for sharing this) and they combine Art, Science and the Indigenous ways of knowing.
Check out their K-8 School Programs here: School Programs
Sign up for their newsletter here: Click here then scroll down to sign up 
Find the cool Drawing lessons here: Drawing lessons​​
BC Hydro:
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BC Hydro has awesome lesson plans, activities and free stuff for teachers (thank you Mallory for sharing this).
You can check out their Earth Week lessons (and challenges with prizes) until April 22nd here: Earth Day Activities
Check out their other activities and lesson plans here: Power Smart for Schools
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Exciting New Canva Magic Features!

I hope everyone had a relaxing and fun Spring Break and that you are all recharged.  Right before the break I watched a Canva presentation about their new features and I have been waiting to tell you about them. They are so awesome-you are going to freak out!  Canva has used AI to create what they are calling AI Magic!  Visit Canva using your free account to try them out.  Most of these features have a link on the front page to try them.
New Features in Canva:
1.  Magic Write – Explain what you would like written and let Canva write it for you. This feature is not available in student accounts.  It is available in all of your Canva design projects though. Let it write your poems, speeches…
2.  Magic Draw – You can now do freehand drawing on your designs and more excitingly you can draw when you use the group Whiteboard. Shape assist will help you make perfect shapes.  The Whiteboard feature is great for brainstorming and for students to create Mindmaps!
3.  Magic Design –  Start by uploading an image and look at the designs that Canva creates for you to help you get started.
4.  Magic Presentation – Describe your presentation topic and let Canva create it for you! Then you can tweak​ it by changing the style and colours.  I asked it to create a presentation on how to use Canva in High School Education and it created this: Kara’s Magi​c Presentation​
5.  Magic Edit and Eraser – this is my favourite!  You can change part of an image by brushing over it and telling it what you would like to have there.  In the picture they share they change a daisy to a rose in a hand!
6.  Beat Sync – create a video in Canva then Canva will add the music that syncs perfectly with your video! It really does seem like magic!

7.  Text to Image – Describe the image you would like and it will create it for you.  To find this one you need to click on Apps on the left and choose Text to Image.

8.  Create an Animation – Just choose an element that you would like to move, drag it across your screen to make a path and it will move during your presentation or video.

​There are a whole bunch of other new features as well like Translate, magic resize, bulk create, layer and gradients but these are some of my favourites.  You can watch the highlights of the presentation that I watched by clicking here.

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