There are many whiteboard tools (Miro, LucidChart, Google Jamboard) that allow students to add sticky notes to a canvas. Most of them require students to sign in (and therefore provide personal information) to post, if the educator only has a free account. Today we will use Canva to engage in a whiteboard AOD, because Canva is one of the few free whiteboard tool that has no such requirement, and that allows anyone with the link to make a post.

The Task

Now that we have introduced ourselves to the group, let’s think about asynchronous online discussions. To do this, we are going to use the framework KWL (Ogle, 1986). Although this metacognitive tool is often used in K-12 education, it can be an effective activity in any training setting. 

KWL is a tool for reflection that places three types of reflection in a graphic organizer. Participants consider each question and place their response in a table. Here are the three questions. Consider how you would answer the first two.

Think of your response for K and W. You may want to summarize it and keep it generally short – 1 or 2 sentences, max.

The Post

Once you have reflected on your answer to the K and W parts of KWL, you will share your responses on a Canva board. It’s best thought of as a giant canvas where we can add sticky notes. The canvas has been set-up as a table with a K (Know), W (Want to know), and L (Learned) column. Each participant will add a sticky note that captures their reflection and contribution to the K and W parts. We will return to this canvas later in the week to add the L (Learned) sticky notes. The end result will be a compilation that allows the whole group to see what expertise we already have in the group, and where we hope to go in this FLO MicroCourse.

Here are the steps to follow to add your K and W sticky notes on the group’s Canva KWL board. The instructions are also provided in a video below.

  1. SITE. Go to the following webpage: https://www.canva.com/design/DAF9J8y2Kzw/M3KmueUpckQonBd-w0kNLQ/edit
  2. ADD A POST. On the left-hand menu, select Elements. Many options will appear. You can scroll to find the sticky notes, or perhaps more efficiently, you can enter “sticky notes” in the search bar for Elements. This will bring up sticky notes of different colours. Pick the one you want.
  3. POSITION THE POST. By default, the post will appear in the middle of the canvas. You can click and drag it to the area of the board that suits you, either the Know or Want to Know column.
  4. ZOOM IN. Next, you will need to zoom in. There is a slider at the bottom right of the screen that allows you to do this. As you zoom in, you will need to control the up-down and left-right sliders (which are on the right-most and bottom-most of your screen) to keep the sticky note in the middle of your screen.
  5. ADD TEXT. Finally, click on your sticky note and start typing to add your text. Once you click outside of the sticky note, you post is done.
  6. REPEAT. You should do two posts on this canvas – one to capture what you already know (K), and one to capture what you want to know (W).

Here is a video showing these steps.

 tinymce-kalturamedia-embed||Making a Post on Canva||400||285

Once you have posted, don’t forget to come back the following day to see the posts that took place after yours and that you may have missed.

We will also return to this in a few days once we have completed this Flo MicroCourse.

References

Ogle, D. (1986). K-W-L: A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text. The Reading Teacher, 39, 564-570.