In today’s episode we are talking to Darren Meredith, a Canva Verified Expert and Canva Creator that helps business owners and creators create better content using Canva. Darren’s top tip is to keep the design simple and not overcomplicate it. Making sure elements are aligned for a better visual experience. If you would like to learn more and listen and watch the episode, then visit: https://mavenbusinesshaven.com/1

Listen carefully and see how you can grow a profitable therapy business online with the right design elements in your business. Bev Xx

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Bev:

Hello. Welcome to Women in Action Podcast. And on today's episode, I'm talking to Darren MEREDITH, who is a Canva specialist an educator. Um, he'll tell you a little bit more about what Canva is. But if you are a speech therapist who's working in schools or clinics, and you're struggling to get sort of resources together for your different clients, maybe you're in the hospital. You want to get sort of age-appropriate resources or if you're working with adults or teenagers then you are in the right place

Darren

: I'm based in Somerset, in the southwest of England, originally from Wales. But yeah, I'm down here now and enjoying the lovely countryside down here, and I'm one of the verified experts. I was one of the 1st 20 Canva-verified experts in the world that happened earlier this year.

My background is in project management and process improvement. But I gave up that life to do something a bit more creative. I wanted to help business owners be more creative and create amazing content. And so that's when I started using Canva and being part of the kind of a community there. I then started being a Canva creator. So I actually create content directly on Canva that can be used by millions of users of Canva around the world.

There are 41 of us ( experts) now. We've just recently added a few more globally. There are only three of us in the UK , that are kind of verified experts and were all really good friends, which is really nice, and we all work together and kind of help each other out with trying to help our communities. And if someone's got a question that say, I can't answer, I'll go and speak to some of my Canva colleagues. I've got contacts that I speak to directly in Canva. So if there's something that isn't quite obvious straight away, I can always go away and find that. And it's just about helping business owners and educators to be able to create amazing, engaging content using Canva. And there are so many resources available in Canva that are created by creators like myself but also actually qualified educators as well.

Bev: What is Canva?

Darren: Canva is a graphic design software, but it's really easy to use. Drag and Drop graphic design software, and you can also create video in there and animations and that side of things as well. But it's really easy to use graphic design software that has a library of thousands of elements that can be used, and it is just literally, so easy to use.

Bev: How do you think Canva could be used with speech therapists?

Darren: So with speech therapists,and having spoken to yourself and a couple of other friends that work on the education side, I think Canva can be used to create things like flash cards and interactive materials for your clients.

Bev: Yes So they might be in hospitals or clinics or schools or nurseries. So you have the whole range, you know, And sometimes, you know, when you when I use resources, I feel Oh, that's, you know, that's like a cartoon, or it looks a little bit too childish for my teenage clients or my adult clients. And so it's finding resources that are age appropriate and look attractive as well.

Darren: And that's the fun with the resources that are available on Canva. So you do have the cartoon kind of animals and that side of things. But you've also got access to a library of millions of actual photographs and images. So if you want him to change the images from, say, uh, cartoon Penguin, for example, to an actual image of a penguin to be more kind of age appropriate, I would say, then that's something that you can do, um, in Canva, and you can just easily swap them out. So if you see something that has cartoon elements on it, you can then just swap those out with actual photographs and that side of things as well.

Bev: I've created things in Canva for my clients, for teenagers just talking about social situations, or things that have gone wrong or, doing quizzes and things like that. So I was wondering, if you could explain to us whether it could be used for creating games and how how it could be used for creating games.

Darren: Okay, so there's a particular function in Canva called whiteboards, which is really good and what that is. It's kind of like an unlimited Canvas, so it can be as big as you want it to be. Along there, you could kind of put elements that start with a particular sound for your clients. You can create the kind of like a collage or a game where you can You can share a link with the other person. So if they're not located next to you, you can share a link with them and they can interact with that in life. Um, in real-time so you could say to them, Can you find you know, the pirate on the island? And if they click on the pirate on the island and they use and it's helping them use their mouths to then kind of move the pirate around, can you move the pirate from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen so you can get them to do that kind of thing? Um, you could play like a hide-and-seek game where if there are things hidden behind things, so you can lay out items in cover and you can easily move things around. So, um, if it's laid over the top, you could play kind of like a hide and seek kind of game.

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