Canvastic Community Newsletter

helping you get the most out of the innovative student publishing tool

March 2009

Volume 4 Issue 2

www.academicsuperstore.com

800-817-2347

Savings, Selection, Service with Free Shipping for on-line orders!

Newsletter Facts:

This is the current issue of the Canvastic Community Newsletter. This publication helps support the use of the popular publishing software product, Canvastic. Registered users are automatically subscribed to the newsletter but anyone can sign up at www.canvastic.com/community/.

Issues contain lesson plans or activities, tips, news and useful Internet links. Your participation is encouraged. Please send ideas for inclusion to info@canvastic.com.

Independent Review - 4 Stars!

Macworld UK

Send in templates and make $$ for your school. See the news items on the right.

Sell Canvastic to your students and make $$ for your school. See the news items on the right.

Pilot Canvastic for 2 months. Have everyone test it. Park City Schools in Utah did, they bought it for every elementary school as did Steamboat Springs, CO. See canvastic.com/techteacheroffer-as for details.

The new on line version of Canvastic is ready. Try it!

Tip • News • Lesson Plan • Links • Sponsor • Unsubscribe

News

Canvastic Dot Net is becoming a really popular choice!

Canvastic DOT NET is on line and ready to use with your primary students
It is very simple; nothing to install, nothing to buy, you barely have to teach it at all!
Just visit CANVASTIC.NET
CANVASTIC.NET is a really simple, fun version of Canvastic that runs on the Internet. There is nothing to install. You just go to the web page and start drawing and writing. If you have Flash installed it will work for Windows, Mac and Linux.

This version was designed for Pre-K to 2nd grade but you might be drawn into the new Replay feature as well. It "replays" your brush strokes like a movie. Our crack team of testers (Mtn. View Elementary's 2nd grade) had a seed growing into a tree with leaves in just a few minutes. They loved it and the computer lab teacher had visions of primary sequential activities dancing in his head. SEE THE LESSON PLAN BELOW FOR MORE ON THIS!

Canvastic.NET is completely free for now. It prints and saves and makes primary publishing a breeze.
Try it now: http://www.canvastic.net

And let us know what you think about it . Would you be interested in an "ad-free" version? If so what subscription fee would seem appropriate for your school or situation? info@canvastic.com

Fund Raising Opportunities

Sell Canvastic to your students

Make some cash for your technology needs this year. You can offer Canvastic to your students to use at home for a discount and raise funds for your school at the same time. Call us for details at 877-579-8207. It is easy and you can raise $10 for each copy of Canvastic that your students buy. All you have to do is take orders and distribute the CDs! We do everything else.

Share your templates with everyone else

Canvastic LLC would like to build its library of templates with contributions from our users. We would like real technology teachers that work with Canvastic in the classroom to help create that library because you know best what students need. Do you have templates that you use? If so, just send them in and we will probably include them in the next version for download by everyone.

Not sure what to create? Just choose Open Template... from the File menu and browse around. You will get ideas and find something that "should be there" already. If approved, your templates will be included with the next shipping version of Canvastic and posted on line for download. You will be given full credit for your work in the file and on line but Canvastic will assume all publication rights to the document. This would be a great activity for your next workshop with your staff. Have everyone create a template and send them all into Canvastic.

Interested?

Please save the file as a template and email it with your contact information to info@canvastic.com. Please put "Template Submission" in the subject line.

Pilot Canvastic with Everyone

Now any school or class can try Canvastic with students with no cost. You can install Canvastic on as many computers and in as many locations as you wish. Most people are picking a school and/or lab to simplify things but you can configure your pilot any way you wish. It takes a few minutes to setup on the phone. We get all the contact and installation details and have a short lesson on installing it correctly then your registration code arrives via email. It will be valid for 60 days. You can decide when it starts. Call us toll free at 877.579.8207

Conferences

We will be demonstrating Canvastic at an upcoming educational technology conference:

NETA - Omaha - April 23-24

Teacher Scholarships for Conferences

We would like to help you share your expertise and ideas with your local peers. You have shown yourself as a leader by being an early adopter of Canvastic technology. You either already do it or have considered presenting your ideas at the local technology conference. We would like to support those efforts with scholarships. If you are approved to present on the digital publishing process and you can highlight Canvastic as a tool that you use in the process we can award a $250 scholarship to support you directly. The presentation does not have to be "about Canvastic", it just has to highlight it as a great tool for the publishing process. The scholarship can used for materials, travel expenses or personal compensation for your preparation time. We are totally open to the actual content and scope of your presentation.

Besides the scholarship for the presenter, we can provide free single licenses, informational handouts, and/or 60-day pilot licenses for your participants and their schools.

If you would rather host a breakfast or after school meeting for your local technology teacher colleagues, you can use the scholarship for food, door prizes or anything else that facilitates the activity. We are really open to your ideas.

If any of this sounds interesting, just contact us personally and we can get the process going. Hope to hear from you soon and have a great school year.

Canvastic's On-line Community

canvastic.com/community

We know that technology integration specialists like you have no time to waste. With that in mind we are hosting and updating an easy-to-find on-line resource that will help you make the most of using Canvastic with your students. You will find lessons, templates and more.

Send us your templates and examples to share with everyone.

Check it out!

Canvastic Grants for Large Districts Continue

Canvastic is still granting huge free licenses to districts that can help spread the word on our software. See the details in the press release: here.

Tip

Can you easily change the size of photos when you use File Menu > Insert or File Menu > Open Folder... to get them into Canvastic?

Yes, but be sure you have one of the Object tools chosen first. Use the Pointer tool for example:

Then when they are inserted the photos will be objects not erasable paint. Photos will be scaled to the size of your canvas automatically if they are larger than the canvas.

To change the size:

First click the photo with the Pointer tool.
Then just grab the magenta handle and drag "in" to make the photo smaller or "out" to make it bigger.
Then click-hold-drag the photo from the middle to move it into position.

Bonus tip: If you use File Menu > Open Folder... on a folder full of photos, they will all be opened in their own Canvastic documents, scaled to size and ready for a slidehsow or adding text.

Lesson Plan

Title: Integrate Science with the New Science Notebook Templates

Description:

Using the science notebook strategy is a hugely popular activity in elementary science....Science notebooks can be used to help students develop, practice, and refine their science understanding, while also enhancing reading, writing, mathematics, communications and technical skills. Our new templates for supporting this activity were designed by a Presidential Awardee for Excellence in Science Teaching.

Procedure

Contact your district science coordinator or use Science Notebooks for K12 for information on how to get started with this science strategy. But then you can use our new templates to create your students notebooks or to enhance their traditional paper copies with digitally published pages. Below are thumbnails of our templates and some examples to get you started.

You can download the new templates here. After downloading, uncompress the zip file then drag the Science Notebook folder to your Templates folder which is in your Canvastic folder.