A timetable reel, an animated report-card post, a term landing page and first-day cards.
SCHOOL
PROJECTS!
The poster, the report, the slides and the group chat that was supposed to plan them. One file the whole group can open, from the first argument to the last slide.
The lesson deck template. Present fullscreen fills the screen with the title slide; the right arrow moves through the builds and slides, and Esc ends the show.
A+!
THE BRIEF
Group 4 has four weeks and a cress problem
Our example is a science fair. Group 4 is three students, one shared deadline and a question: does the colour of light change how fast cress grows? The fair wants three things on the day: a poster on the board, a written report in a folder, and a five-minute talk with slides. The teacher wants them on time. The group wants to not do it all on Sunday night.
Usually that is a slides app, a word processor, a poster made in whatever the school has, and a group chat holding the plan together with sticky tape. Here it is one PopCraft space: a board to plan, print pages for the poster and report, a deck to present, and everyone in the same files at once.
24×36
inches, the large poster
8
slides in the lesson deck
15
board templates for planning
1
file everyone opens
THE PLAN
Four weeks, start to fair
- 01Week 1
Pick a question
Mind map board. Six branches, too many ideas, one vote. Cress wins because it grows in a week. - 02Week 2
Run the experiment
Three trays, three colours of light. Photos every morning, dropped straight into the file. - 03Week 3
Write it up
The report: a cover and body pages on a folio master, so page numbers and the footer take care of themselves. - 04Week 4
Make the poster
A 24×36 poster for the fair. Preflight before the print shop, so nothing important gets trimmed. - 05Fair day
Present it
The deck, with builds one idea per click and notes only you can see.
WEEK 1
Argue on a board, not in the chat
Start a Mind map board: a topic in the middle with six branches, already connected. Press S, click, type: Who tests the soil samples? Everyone in the group can do the same at the same time, with their own cursor, so nobody waits for the person holding the marker.
When it is time to decide, set the timer for five minutes of ideas, then start a vote. Three dots each, click the stickies you like, end the vote, and the question with the most dots wins. Democracy, with a countdown. The boards page has the rest.
The mind map board template in PopCorn. S picks the sticky tool; a click drops a sticky note and Who tests the soil samples? is typed on it. A second sticky gets Poster due Friday.
WEEK 2
Keep the evidence in the file
Experiments make photos. Drag them straight onto the board, date them with a sticky, and they are there when you build the poster. Comments pin to the photo they are about: “Tray B looks mouldy, redo?” is much more useful next to tray B than at the bottom of a chat.
A retro board in PopCorn. Timer opens the countdown and Start runs it. Then Voting opens its panel, Start voting hands out the dots, three stickies are clicked, and End voting tallies the results.
A landing page in Design. C picks the comment tool and a click on the hero places a comment: “Can we try a shorter headline?” is posted. The Comments panel opens on the right and Reply opens under it, “Trying three words now” is sent, and the thread is resolved with the tick.
A launch post in the editor, signed in. The Shapes panel’s Library section lists the media in the team’s files. The team is set to Brightside Studio and the type to Images, and one of the photos is clicked: it lands on the canvas, copied into this file.
WEEK 3
A report with real pages
The Annual report template is a cover and body pages laid out on a folio master: the page number and footer live on the master, so every page gets them without anyone typing them. Its sample text is a company's year in review, so replace it with your aim, method, results and conclusion. The layout, the headings and the figures row are a good shape for a write-up.
Charts? Draw the bars as rectangles, or paste them from your spreadsheet as a picture. For anything that is the same design many times, like name badges for the whole class, Bulk create merges a CSV into one page per row.
An event poster. Command-P opens Print: what to print (every page), how the pages sit on the paper (single pages), and Full bleed, already on for a print page. Crop marks is turned on; the dialog says what each sheet will be.
WEEK 4
A poster the print shop says yes to
Open Large poster 24×36: type at wall scale, set to read from across the gym. Keep it to a question, three photos, one chart and a sentence of answer. People read posters while walking past; nobody reads paragraph four.
Before it goes anywhere, open Preflight and click Run. It lists what would go wrong on paper and where: text crossing the safe margin, art that stops short of the bleed, lines too thin to print, photos too low-resolution for the size. In the clip it catches the footer crossing the margin. Fix it, then press ⌘P or export a PDF. The print and PDF page explains bleed in plain words.
The 24×36 large poster template in Design. The Preflight tab opens in the right panel and Run checks the page: safe margin, bleed, hairlines, image resolution, fonts and overflowing text, each issue listed with where it is.
FAIR DAY
Present it, with notes nobody sees
The Lesson deck is an eight-slide science lesson about photosynthesis, which is suspiciously close to cress. Objectives, ideas that build one per click, an equation, steps, key numbers, a check question and homework. Swap in your own and keep the shape.
Click Present. The right arrow plays the next build, then the next slide. Presenter view puts your notes and the next slide on your screen and only the slide on the projector. If someone asks a question, press B to black out the screen so everyone looks at you. The slides page covers builds and notes.
The lesson deck template. Present fullscreen fills the screen with the title slide; the right arrow moves through the builds and slides, and Esc ends the show.
GRADED
How Group 4 did
The grades are made up. The tools in the middle column are real, and all of them are in PopCraft today.
SCIENCE FAIR · REPORT CARDGroup 4 · Does light colour change how fast cress grows?
Planning
Mind map board, stickies, timer, votes
“Finally agreed on a question before week three.”
A
Poster
24×36 Large poster, Preflight, ⌘P
“Readable from the back of the gym.”
A+
Report
Annual report pages on a folio master
“Page numbers in the right place. Unheard of.”
A
Presentation
Lesson deck, builds, presenter view
“Did not read off the slides. Mostly.”
A+
Teamwork
One shared file, comments, live cursors
“Somebody still did it all on Sunday night.”
B+
ALL YEAR
Not just the science fair
CERTIFICATES
WELL DONE!The Certificate template, and Bulk create to put every name on its own copy.
GRADUATION
WOOHOO!Graduation cards in six themes, plus high school, college and grad school ones.
WHAT YOU SKIP
The project stack, before and after
| THE USUAL WAY | IN POPCRAFT |
|---|---|
| A group chat as the plan | A shared board with stickies, a timer and votes |
| A poster in whatever the school has | Real poster sizes, Preflight and a print-ready PDF |
| Typing page numbers by hand | A folio master numbers every page |
| Slides in one app, report in another | Pages and decks in the same space, same fonts |
| Emailing “final_FINAL_v3.pptx” | One file everyone opens, with its version history |
FROM ZERO
Your project in six moves
- 1
Make a board
New whiteboard, or the Mind map template. Share it with the group. - 2
Agree on the plan
Stickies, a timer for brainstorming, dot votes for the decision. - 3
Start the poster
Print › Large poster 24×36 or Event poster 18×24. Big type, few words. - 4
Write the report
Annual report: change the words; the folio master numbers the pages. - 5
Build the slides
Lesson deck: one idea per slide, builds for the steps. - 6
Print and present
Preflight, ⌘P or a PDF for the shop, then Present.
BEING HONEST
It makes the project look good. You still do the science.
There is no dedicated science-report template yet, so the report starts from the annual report. There is no chart tool that reads your data: draw the bars or paste the chart as a picture. Working together needs everyone signed in. And PopCraft will not stop the group leaving it to Sunday night. The boards docs are a good first read.
ASKED & ANSWERED
Questions, answered
Can my whole group work on it at once?
Yes, when you are signed in and share the file. Everyone sees the same canvas with live cursors, and comments pin to the layer they are about. Boards have a shared timer and dot voting for decisions.
What poster sizes are there?
The Large poster template is 24×36 inches and the Event poster is 18×24. The Large-format poster comes at A2, A1 and A0. Or type any size into Page setup.
Will the print shop accept it?
Export a PDF with the bleed included and crop marks on, in CMYK if they ask. Run Preflight first: it flags text crossing the safe margin, art that stops short of the bleed, hairlines, low-resolution pictures, missing fonts and text that overflows its box.
Is there a science report template?
Not a science one. The report template is an annual report: a cover and body pages on a folio master. Its layout suits a write-up well; the words are yours to replace.
Can I present from PopCraft?
Yes. Present fullscreen, in a window for screen share where the browser allows it, or with Presenter view and notes. Arrow keys move through builds and slides; B blacks out the screen and W whites it.
Can I hand in a PDF of the slides?
Yes. From ⋯ › Export, save the deck as a PDF and hand that in alongside the report.
THE MANUAL, FOR THE DETAILS
A+! YOUR TURN.
Posters, reports and presentations that get the A. Free to start, in your browser or on your Mac.