Art Made Easy: How Kleki and AutoDraw Can Enhance Student Creativity

Thanks for listening to the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast, where each week we talk about a free piece or two of technology that you can use in your classroom. I'm your host, Shanna Martin. I'm a middle school teacher, technology and instructional coach for my district, and I'm.

A producer and husband, Fuzz Martin. And I usually have a pun, but today I'm drawing a blank.

It's better than singing, I guess, because you were going to sing.

I was singing earlier.

You can sing at the end.

I'm not going to. I'm going to fight the urge. Nice to sing about Kleki.

Yes. We are back. It is episode 195. We have been doing so many things. It's been a very busy week.

Yes.

So, hi.

Yeah, it has been a very busy week. It's been a very busy month of October. Of October.

Yes. And I was able to present at the My PETA conference, which was very cool.

On Friday, I was able to present virtually, which is kind of cool because, yeah, all my students like, are you going to Canada? I'm like, no, but that would be fun.

I am through the world of technology.

The Internet.

Yes.

So I thought I would do some fun sites that were not content specific. This week I wanted to do some digital art creation because you can use it in any class and the kids enjoy it and it's fun.

So we're doing fun things today.

Great.

All the fun things.

All the fun things. All the fun things.

Yes.

Thank you.

There's songs.

See?

Let's see how many songs you can think of while we do this podcast.

Please don't, because I will.

Okay, so let's talk about Kecky first. So Kelecki is an auto, not an autodraw. Scratch that. Pleki is a cool drawing site that's free, that's easy to get to.

So my top five things about Kleki are that, you know, it opens up. It's one of those where you just klek on it, open it. Everything's there.

Okay.

You don't have to, like, sign in or do anything. You just literally click and open. Which is great.

You click and open.

Yes. Oh, man. We're gonna have all the things. You can download your art right to your computer.

Okay.

Or you can share it. So students are on their Chromebooks and they, like, create something really cool. They can download it right away or they can share it.

You have the option to do both. It's really easy to navigate. Like, you can throw a student on, I'd say probably fourth grade and up.

Younger Students could with a little direction, but all the tools are right on the right hand side. So it's super easy to get to. The tools are very intuitive. So like, oh, click here. Like this one is going to make the shape and that thing.

And then it's a great way to introduce digital art to students, I think, because a lot of times, you know, we do paper, pencil, and then we sometimes using Photoshop and things like that, they get a little complicated. And this is very easy to teach kids about digital art or kind of.

Starts to show them the tools and.

Yeah, but it also doesn't have all the AI features in there, which we'll talk about with the next tool.

Okay.

So this one just like really allows kids to create and something doesn't step in to fix it for them. Sure. They just get to create, which I think is cool. So, Kalecki.

Yes.

I think of like a chicken. But anyway.

Yeah. By the way, it's spelled K L E K I. Yeah.

And that's the website. It's K L E K. That's all you have to type in. And then boom, everything's there.

Then it just clicks.

So I'm going to draw chicken because that's all I keep making it.

Oh, that's a good idea.

And I'm.

I won't balk at that.

I'm going to make a green chicken. So in Kleki, basically, you.

It'll give you a blank white background, but if you want to swap out to something else, you actually have the option to click on it and you can choose black or like a green background or that blank, no background. So if you're creating a piece of art that you want to not have a background, you have a transparent background as an option too, which I can.

Also click on the. The paintbrush and change it to the paint bucket and then fix it too. I'm sorry, am I giving away things?

You are. I'm like walking through and you're like already in here drawing. All right. Yes.

So that was my next thing is if you want to change the background to be a color, click on the paint bucket. You also have the option to do like a fade effect if you want to, for your background. And you can make it cool and faded in different colors.

And then they've got lettering tools, they have shapes. And I also appreciate that you. There's a little hand on there. You can grab the hand and move your whole piece of paper at once.

So you can shift things around to make it easier. The usual zoom in, zoom out. Back button, that kind of thing.

Sure.

But you also. Then once you have your background chosen, whatever you want it to be when you choose the paintbrush, then you have cool paintbrush options.

So you have the usual, like brush or pencil type options, but you also have kind of like a highlight or a fade button where you can color things. And then my favorite one I've decided is this. I don't know, it's like a point and drag tool.

Okay.

So it like adds shape. Like it kind of gives you faded corners or does like a sharp with a rounded feature as you're drawing. I don't know.

It gives you lots of extra options. And then, so, yeah, there's just different drawing tools that can help you draw circles or paint or things like that.

But also it gives you options to kind of create and do whatever you choose to. There's lots of erasers, and then it'll pull each layer at a time.

So you can just keep hitting the back button if you don't like something that you created and you can back button that and get rid of the things that you didn't want as much as you'd like to. And I'm creating a chicken as we speak because I just keep thinking about chickens.

Yeah.

And also I am making a green chicken because obviously a green chicken is exactly what is needed today.

I agree.

So there's that.

Everybody needs green chicken.

Everybody needs a green chicken. So collect offers just like all kinds of cool tools to use and draw and teach.

You have the layering option, so you can see, like, which layer you're working in. You can add layers to a. Take layers away. So you can teach students how those features kind of work in digital drawing.

And then they have editing features so you can put in perspective and you can rotate and resize. And all those tools are just right there on the right hand side.

So like I said, this one's really easy for kids if you just kind of get them going to click and there's. It doesn't feel complicated. It feels very like, oh, I'm gonna add some curves or I want to add some transitions.

You could also, when you're doing like translations in math class, this would be a great tool to teach kids to digitally work on translations in math in math class and like flipping and rotating and all that kind of stuff. And they could draw it and do math at the same time.

Sure.

And then you also have the option there is no auto save. So I need do need to make that clear. Like, there's no auto save or Cloud storage.

But you can click the little save button, you can copy it, and then you can decide if you want a PNG file or a PSD file. So you do have those options as well. And so it's all there. Like all these tools are there.

And it's very user friendly, all the color options, all of the things. And of course there's an eraser, so you can erase whatever you're not comfortable with or if you messed up, and you can just fix it that way.

Awesome.

What are you drawing?

I'm also drawing a chicken.

Are you. Are we gonna have a chicken competition?

Oh, I mean, if you want. I don't know if you dare go with my chicken drawing skills, but I.

Think mine looks more like a duck. Currently, I don't know exactly how to make it look more like a chicken.

But I mean, I'm kind of a chicken connoisseur, so. Yeah.

Okay. What color chicken is yours?

It's white.

No, I have a. I have a hunter green chicken with mint and lavender feathers.

Oh, that's. That's. That's cool.

Because it's art.

Yeah.

And this is my option for how I'm making a chicken.

That's great.

Yeah. So there you go.

Yeah.

So clacky. Try it out with your kids. It's one of those too.

Even if they need a brain break or if they, you know, have rainy day inside things going on, it's a great way to create.

And if they're doing other things in classes, so if they need some diagrams to draw or if you need them to create a logo for something or a title page for something, they could absolutely do that. They also can make backgrounds for Google Slides if they chose to. So there's a lot of different things.

Like once they create this and learn about digital art a little bit that they could definitely download and use in other classes as well.

Great.

So there you go. Kalecki K L E K I dot com.

You can create quite a collection of art.

And with that, don't you worry, we are going to share our chickens for all to see.

Do you want to see mine?

Sure. Your chicken. Oh, your chicken looks like a chick.

Yeah, mine.

Mine looks like a piece of interpretive art.

Oh, yours.

It does. It's fine.

That's fine.

All right. So there is one other tool that I want to talk about.

I need to download mine.

Okay. Download your chicken.

All right.

And the other tool I have, I actually talked about. And I was laughing. I talked about this in episode 20. So if you want to go Back a few episodes and listen to.

If I want to go back 175.

Episodes and listen to it, then it's fine. There has been changes since, so that's also why I wanted to bring it up. But it is called Autodraw.

And so I know we talk a lot about AI tools and things like this, things like that. And Autodraw has been around for a while, and it is an AI tool, but also it's a creation tool. So it kind of works both ways.

I talked about it in episode 20, but there definitely has been upgrades since episode 20. So I just had a quick top three list for this one. I could do five, but since it's the second site, I thought I'd talk about three things.

But it supports creativity for kids who get, like, frustrated and say, like, I'm not an artist or I can't do art or those types of things, or they. It's hard sometimes to draw on a computer, especially if you don't have a mouse and you're just using, like, a trackpad.

So it helps all kinds of students feel creative without worrying about their drawing skills, which I think is important. So it gives another option for digital art. It saves time and frustration for kids and teachers.

Like, if you have five minutes, I need you to create something because we're going to use it for another purpose.

So maybe they have to create some sort of image that needs to go into an infographic or they need some sort of image to upload into a presentation, and we don't have 20 hours to spend drawing something. Autodraw is really helpful for that because then they can take.

It will Autodraw, and then they can tweak their art, and then it's really easy and quick to share. So Autodraw just gives you options for quick creation. It takes away a lot of the frustration that sometimes happens with drawing online.

And then it's really helpful. So Autodraw a U T O D R a w dot com. So Autodraw, it is a. It's a magic piece of art.

So basically, you get your piece of paper in front of you, your digital piece of paper, and don't you worry, there is a paint bucket to fill in. Oh, and change your background color.

Okay. Yeah, look at that. There it is.

But the cool thing about Autodraw is that you get a magic pencil. So there is a magic pencil on the top of your screen. You'll see it's like a pencil and it's got little stars around it.

Yep.

And once you draw something you can. Then.

Are we drawing?

Sure. So I'm gonna draw a circle with a little line on the top. You could all guess it could be a piece of fruit or it's a pumpkin.

Okay.

Okay.

Yep.

So I now have a blue background with my black pumpkin on front of it. So I want to then change my fill. I'm going to change my fill color to orange, and then it'll fill in my pumpkin orange.

And then we make the stem green. Very typical.

So Autodraw will take the random oval I made on my screen with a little line on top, and that gives me a whole set of options on the top of my screen of what the image could be. So I'm like, hey, magic pencil. I'm going to draw another circle. Oh, wow. And you just drew an actual looking chicken.

Yes.

That is better than both of our chickens.

Yes.

So I just drew a circle, and now I have options. It could be a piece of fruit. It could be a moon. It could be a golf ball. It could be. And then it keeps.

Just keeps scrolling across the top of the screen. I got a computer. I have a clock, I have flowers. It gives you all of these options of what this one circle interpretation could be.

I'm going to choose a volleyball. So I have a pumpkin and a volleyball. But then I'm adding other details to the volleyball, and it continues giving me more options for drawings.

So now I have a volleyball in jail because I was just trying straight lines. Maybe not.

So there are all kinds of options that once you start editing the picture they gave you, it will give you more options to add detail into the pictures if you choose to.

Yeah.

So they're very simplified drawings, but the more you build on them, the more complicated they can get. Or you can keep it very simple, and you're like, hey, cool, I need everybody to crank out some sort of fruit.

And then you're going to put it into this document because we're going to write a story about how to shop for fruit. I don't know.

Yeah.

So it just gives you quick images the kids are creating, and they have the options for filling and coloring and things like that. But it also. It doesn't take forever for some of those kids that are perfectionists.

Yeah.

And it takes away the frustration of sometimes how drawing on computers can be. So Autodraw gives you these options. It also has text options and shape options. Again, super easy to use.

And then when you're all done and you love it, you just click the little hamburger at the top and. Which is the Three lines and you can just click download. And you can download it. Boom. Just downloaded my pumpkin.

Boom.

There you go.

I downloaded my. The. The chick that I drew and then the chick that it gave me.

Oh, cool.

So.

So you can see them side by side.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it is. It's a.

It's on like it's an AI experiment, but it's been around for a long time, and it just has options for making art and creating with little frustration.

Very good.

Yeah. It's also good to make flashcards with, too.

I've done that before where I've used autodraw to create the images I need for flashcards and put the text on them. Yeah, it's a quick. Like, you can crank them out.

Very good.

So there you go. This has been episode 195.

195.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Thanks for tuning in. This has been the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast. If you ever have any questions, you can find me on X at smartinwi or on Threads.

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