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Free Canva Pro for Educators (Plus Free Access to Students)

Exclusive for Educators – Free Canva Pro with access to Canva for Education resources and tools. Create whatever your classroom needs to connect and engage with students.

Teachers immediately get access to all Canva Pro features and extensive library of templates while your Free Pro Canva account gets approved, so you can start designing your own documents like worksheets, calendars, presentations and so on. Or use an existing template.

Easily create and publish any design with a professional look while also reduce classroom prep-time. In addition, for students Canva has a ton of resources to make classroom projects and academic presentations more attractive.

With Canva Docs create documents and integrate videos, images, graphics, charts, and graphs and other design elements to complete a flowing visual component to your lesson plan. No need to create separate documents or graphs.

What is Canva

Canva is a design platform with a collection of premium photos, icons, illustrations and videos and a ton of other easy to use design tools. Effortlessly compose and publish your designs anywhere and in different formats. Print, media, apps, presentations, videos – you name it.

For Teachers Canva Pro is completely free and exclusive access to Canva for Education Tools

What can you do with Canva?

Canva is used by business, by educators as well as for personal use. Canva is a gold mine that’s popular with commerce and marketing professionals. However, for teachers and students it is a hidden jewel, with tons of tools to help both in and out of the classroom – especially after the pandemic changed how schools and students are engaged in the classrooms, online learning or homeschooling.

Free Canva Pro for Educators

Canva Pro with educational Resources Free for teachers

Are you a teacher? apply to get a FREE Canva Pro account

How to get Canva Pro for Educators

  1. To get Canva Pro free first Create a Canva account (choose Canva ProClaim my free trial” or “Try Canva free for 30 days“) using your school email.
    • Once you enter your email and ‘click to try it’, your Canva Pro account is created and you can start using Canva immediately.
  2. Next, gather up documentation that shows evidence of valid teaching qualification, such as:
    • A photo/scan of a license/certification indicating K-12 teaching qualification.
    • A photo/scan showing employment status at the school.
    • A photo/scan of School ID indicating teaching status.
  3. Once you have all your documents log into your Canva account and complete the Canva free for education application and submit your documents as indicated.

TIP: Check out the Canva Tutorials for Teachers once you sign up to maximize Canva Pro. You don’t have to wait to get verified to view the tutorials.

Do you have a Canva account already?

I’ve come across a lot of teachers who already use Canva with a personal account. You can still register for a Canva Pro account with your school email and then gather your educator credentials to apply for the Pro version and get it free.

Important: After signing up with your school email you must verify your credentials to get Free Canva Pro for Educators

Who qualifies for Free Canva Pro for Education

To get Canva Pro for education you have to meet the qualifications listed in Canva for educators guideline page to get approved

Note: you must use your school email in order to register and qualify for Pro Canva based per guidelines.

Teachers at a qualified educational institution can apply to get Canva Pro for Education FREE worldwide where Canva has a presence and approval is assessed by Canva directly.

Canva Pro for Educators is available for K – 12 teachers and students in primary, secondary or pre-college only. It is not yet available for University and Higher Education professors or students unfortunately.

As a college student or educator you can still sign up for the Free Canva version and access resources.

Canva Free, Canva Pro & Canva for Education – What’s the Difference

Understanding Canva versions

Canva has a Basic and a Pro version.

The Canva Basic version is free and everyone has access to several design tools at no cost. It is also Free Forever.

Canva Pro is the premium version of Canva. It is available for everyone to upgrade from the Canva Basic version through a subscription plan.

Canva Pro version gives access to everything in the Canva Free Version plus an amazing array of more premium design tools, more pictures, more fonts, resize tools, clear backgrounds, etc.

Canva Pro subscription price can be paid monthly ( $12.99/month) or annually ($119.99/yr). However, teachers get FREE Canva Pro and more.

Canva Pro goes a step further with Canva for Education tools exclusively available for educators

What’s the difference? Anybody can get Canva, but not everyone gets access to Canva for Education.

Canva for Education

Canva for Education is an extension of Canva Pro with exclusive additional resources just for teachers. These extra resources are not available for other Canva Pro subscribers either. Canva for education includes everything in the Pro version and more – for free for teachers and students in primary, secondary K12 institutions.

What you get:

Teachers get a wide array of free Pro premium design tools to make pretty much anything needed for classroom teaching. From newsletters, to flyers to reward stickers to worksheets.

Moreover, with Canva Pro for education, teachers can share with each other lesson plans, classroom activities and ideas. Most important however, is the ability to work as a team with other teachers to brainstorm ideas and collaborate in real-time.

Above all and probably most valuable, Canva saves teaching prep time.

Is Canva for Education secure?

Canva for education operates under a secure platform that meets strict confidentiality guidelines, allowing teachers to create a classroom ecosystem and give students access to connect in a safe environment. It integrates with other learning systems like Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams, Flipgrid, Kahoot among others.

Example: Integration with Google Classroom

If you use Google Classroom for example, upon approval of your Canva for Pro as educator, you’ll have access to connect your account to Google Classroom. From there, you can create online class discussions and share content (links, videos, images) etc. with your students and coworkers.

Connect with Other teachers and staff members (not just teachers) that you wish to share and collaborate with. Moreover, they will use their own Canva account as well. (share this post so they can learn about Canva for Education to be in your team).

Here’s a small breakdown of what teams can collaborate.

TemplatesImagesIcons & illustrations
Access content from Google, Drive, Dropbox, FoldersFonts‘live’ designs: Giphy,
YouTube, QR codes

Its pretty easy to customize your classroom’s papers and teaching tools to your needs using Canva. Create class schedules, worksheets, charts, calendars, certificates, idea boards for your lessons and so on… If you use Google Classroom you can customize the headers, add your own worksheets and upload your intro video to give it a personal touch.

These are just a few of the exclusives (visit canva.com/education for full details). The biggest Canva Pro for Education advantage is that it saves teacher prep time. Not to mention that Canva has tons of templates for just about anything that can be freely edited and customized.

When it comes to saving money and education, Canva is an excellent resource for educators, parents and students.

With Canva you can create designs to –

  • Organize class schedules, lesson plans, class projects, presentations, graphic organizers.
  • Create, record and share video lessons with your students. Canva has a music and video clip library that helps enhance your videos and create a more interactive experience.
  • Templates or create your own from scratch. .
  • Ideas and inspirations: with Canva you see what other teachers are creating and using in their classroom, making it a great a source for ideas and lesson inspirations.
  • Design using your school’s branding kit – match your designs with the school’s color’s, logo and other styling or create your own class identity. Student and parents will recognize when something is coming from you by using the same design intro for your classroom content.
  • Lesson slides, quizzes, worksheets – From social emotional learning to math
  • Virtual backgrounds
  • Virtual classrooms

There’s more than the above listed however.

Take a look at some worksheets created by other Canva users:

The Canva Pro version is free for 30 days to try for anybody. During the trial period all the premium elements of Canva Pro subscription are free to use at no cost. In addition, whatever you design you can choose to download as well as publish or share as you wish.

Obviously, the Canva Pro version allows you to use any design tool without any additional cost, though there are a few limitations.

No matter which version you have, all your designs stay in the Canva cloud until you delete your Canva account.

Another difference between the free and Pro versions is that the Pro version has extra features not available in the free version, such as Canva Teams for example. When you create a team you can share files and designs with others. You’ll also be able to designate an administrator or assign member roles to your team. To start with Canva teams all you have to do is send an email sharing your account.

Canva teams is free for everyone, but with the Pro version however, you get additional functionalities that are tied in to other Canva Pro tools as listed below, as well as assign more roles to team members. Additionally, Canva Pro allows unlimited member invitations and teams. With several teams, just assign each team a name to identify them.

Instant access to all the Pro Canva features after sign up

You can start creating as soon as you sign up. Once the Canva staff verifies your information you’ll receive a confirmation email of the Pro version for free.

You can create pretty much anything you need for your classroom.

These are just a few of the countless creatives for education Canva can be used for however. The fact that Canva integrates image editing, publishing tools, team collaborations and other tools make it more of a one stop shop for teacher support.

What else can you do with Canva?

  • Print – posters, business cards, flyers, invitations, stickers, etc.
  • Share your school events – publish social media posts, stories, thumbnails, videos, banners for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and other social media outlets.
  • Design documents such as resumes, letterheads, reports, invoices, calendars
  • Design & print school team t-shirts for sports or special events.
  • Design certificates, awards, graduations and other event invitations and announcements.
  • Organize recipe cards, create a photo collage, scrapbook and other hobbies.

Canva design tools

Popular tools available in Canva to design, edit and create:

  • Customize templates
  • Magic resize – customize the size on an image to use in different designs
  • Remove background from photos with a click
  • Animation
  • Music
  • Video editing tools
  • Premium fonts
  • Enhanced editing tools
  • Brand Kit – create brand recognition of your school or classroom with the use of colors, logos, fonts and other elements across different types of designs. This feature also offers Pro users time saving tools like branded templates, drag and drop logo among others.
  • Color wheel for color blending
  • Palette generator
  • Transparent background
  • Presentation playlists
  • Animated stickers
  • Choose download quality
  • Enhanced support
  • Unlimited folders to organize designs and images. This feature allows for naming the folders as well as moving, sharing and editing folders.
  • 100 GB storage

There’s more than the above listed, as Canva is always adding more design tools to stay on top of what consumers need.

Though it seems to be a lot, I don’t find Canva to be overwhelming. When it comes to design, the more – the better. There are a lot of ways to design and edit whatever you’re designing. You don’t want to limit yourself to what is just shown in the templates, so be sure to checkout Canva design tutorials so you can make the most of all its components when you try it out.

Additionally important, whatever you design with Canva is always accessible. You can store your designs wherever you want – your PC, phone, flashdrive – but you also always have access to them online. Canva relies on a cloud-base storage platform. As long as you have access to the internet your designs are at your fingertips.

You can also design your presentation on the go by downloading the Canva app – available for IOS and Android devices.

Canva for students

Did you know that you can make your school papers and academic presentations more attractive with Canva?

For college students, Canva is a fantastic alternative to the usual projects software, with awesome resources that add unique features to academic presentations and school assignments for free. For parents, Canva is a safe source for young students to get visual resources for their school papers and other school reports.

Canva can be used by children of any age, though for children age 13 and under, Canva requires direct supervision by a guardian or another authorized adult such as a teacher.

Not just for teachers and administrators, but students can create their own portfolios and student work, and share in the classroom

I recently had to do an elaborate academic presentation along with a project paper that included data tools, assessment questionnaires and of course pictures. I needed a way keep the audience engaged and looked around for a tool that would enhance the information presented, and that’s how I discovered Canva.

What would otherwise be a presentation with dull data looked more interesting and attractive by integrating Canva design elements. I was able to easily design my own survey forms and edit how data showed. I even added audio to add an interactive component with my classmates and the professor.


Here are some examples of different academic presentations made with Canva

different examples of presentations and papers made with Canva.
Make your presentation pop with cool fonts, or even simply resizing a standard font to make a statement in your presentation or project paper.

Canva Pro is an excellent resource for getting images for book reports or science projects for example. More than just images however, creating flow charts to explain experiments to show on projects or reports look more organized and give a better presentation, and can easily be created with Canva.

Trouble getting your presentation started started?

I usually have trouble starting any presentation or project, especially an academic presentation or paper that is being graded or evaluated, so I use Canva templates to give me a push for ideas. They’re already pre-designed and all I do is customize it. The hard part is choosing one as there are several templates with different layouts.

The following video shows an example of some of the templates available to customize in Canva for academic presentations.

Each template includes several editable layouts. Easily edited to include your own images, notes and other visual tools to make your presentation pop. Canva even helps create a graph with its Graph Maker tool. As long as you have the numbers, Canva creates visually pleasing and editable charts and graphs to insert in the presentation.

Canva academic presentation templates

Canva Pro limitations

  • While you may still access designs you created on your mobile apps, some special Canva Pro features and settings are only available on a desktop.
  • Some work created in Canva cannot be trademarked or limited to your brand or team. Contact Canva to get more details about what is allowed.

Canva for Personal Use

In my opinion, Canva for personal use is a treasure trove. Canva has a lot of social and personal design elements within the application. No need to have several apps that do different things anymore.

  • Social Media – Creating for social media is a breeze. You can share directly to your social media account from Canva. For anyone who wants to build up followers, you can customize your posts and messages with designs and colors that let people know who you are each time you share something. Also known as branding. And when you share across several media platforms, resizing is as easy as a click.
  • Life events – Plan a celebration or another life event with complete control of how you want to design invitations, announcements, thank you cards and even t-shirts to help you celebrate.

I can go on with more examples but using Canva for personal use is limitless. My favorite thing about using Canva is that I can see what other people have designed and get ideas from that. This is especially useful when I can’t think of how to start a design.

This may interest you: Free Professional Looking Invitations

Canva for Business

Most people use Canva for business purposes. Its easy to understand why though. The Brand tool kit feature is easy to use as well as a time saver. For example, by creating a brand template and simply dragging your logo into your design, the work is halfway done.

Another feature that is optimal for businesses is access to an amazing library of high quality images. However, an excellent feature that is extremely helpful for business is the ability to take the same image you are using for social media, for example, and use it for an infographic or a newsletter with a simple click.

For marketing purposes, using the resize tool and branded templates, creating brochures, flyers, and ads is simpler. However, with Canva Pro Teams collaboration between staff is more organized, streamlined and manageable. Team members can brainstorm, share, edit, create and so on based on their assignments. As an administrator, it is easier to track and control the progress of several projects.

Canva is not exclusive to specific business size or type of business. For example, a student launching a dog walking service to help pay for school or get extra money can design flyers to start rounding up customers.

Canva Pro Cost

After the trial period, if you don’t qualify to get Canva for Education free, Canva Pro costs $12.95 per month. You can save money on Canva Pro when you pay for the full year. $119.99, which comes out to $9.95 per month .

Canva Pro is Free for 30 days

Want to try it free?

Here’s What to Do:

  • start your free Canva (free or Pro trial)
    • sign up with Google, Facebook or email account.

As I mentioned above, Canva Pro is free to try for 30 days for everyone. Canva will generously send you a reminder 3 days before the free period ends. You can cancel at any time or continue your subscription.

Limited Time Offer: 5 Canva Pro Subscriptions for the Price of 1

Also Read: 10 Free Brainstorming Templates

Canva Pro is not about creating designs however. Its about creating beautiful yet professional looking designs. With the free Canva Pro 30 days trial you can design to your hearts content.

As someone who use to work in schools (and also a student myself), I always need resources that are beyond the scope of what is available within the school. More often than not, what I need is not free. So when it comes to getting interactive materials for my work, I use Canva.

Hope this free resource supports you in preparing classroom materials and free up some prep-time.

Happy savings, TaLis

This post is 100% written by a human being

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This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my full disclosure HERE. Thank you.

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