Are You Using Infographics in Your Program?

Submitted by Ashly Winkle on Sun, 10/09/2022 - 14:52
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  • 6 Comments

Engaging students and developing their creativity skills are two of many requirements in our 21st century classrooms. Fortunately, there are several tools available to help us achieve these requirements. A great option is to use infographics.

I regularly use infographic makers for social media posts, but I have also found them useful for student handouts and visuals to help make my instruction more effective. If you don't have time to make your own, it's pretty easy to find premade ones that you can edit. Additionally, having students make their own infographics can be impactful for learning and demonstrating learning. 

Some of my favorite infographic creators include Canva, PosterMyWall, and Adobe Express.

  • What are some of your creator tools?
  • How do you use infographics in adult education?
  • Consider joining Lizelena Iglesias and me for our session on this topic on Oct. 19th at 3:30 EST. Sign up here: Using Infographics to Communicate Learning
  •  Feel free to share some of your or your students (with permission) creations on this post!

Comments

I tend to use Canva when making infographics for class. For my ESL classes, I often ask them to create infographics in Google Slides or PowerPoint. They can use one slide for their graphic, and it reinforces many of the tech skills that we focus on at the level I'm teaching. Additionally, it prints nicely. I love Canva, but some of their infographic templates are so long that it's hard to print or design them to be easy to see on our school's LMS.

I have used infographics for many purposes in my classes. Sometimes I use it to set expectations (like a community agreement); other times I use it to highlight the importance of something we're learning (like subordinating conjunctions); more recently, I've also used infographics to show the progression of small assessments that make up our class project. I seem to gravitate to infographics for two key goals: to get learners' attention or show the relationship between ideas.

I've signed up for the session that you and Lizelena are hosting. I can't wait to learn new ways to integrate them into my classes!

(Linked is a graphic I created for a goal-setting unit. I'm typing this response on the weekend and do not have learners' permission to share work.)

 

Thanks for sharing your SMART-O goals graphic, Erin.  I love the way you've defined the components.  I struggle a bit with using this formula at the lower levels.  I get hung on attainable and relevant.  Any correction I make to what students have written in those sections feels really condescending to me, but the way you've defined those removes barriers.

I also like how you use infographics to show progress and connect ideas.  I tend to use them as a tool for students to summarize at the lower levels.  This has opened my eyes to new possibilities.

I'm a big Canva fan, too.  It took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure it out, but I'm a Canva fiend now :)

For synchronous, online collaboration on infographics, Jamboard might be a good option! It doesn't create graphics that are as polished as other sites, but it doesn't require as much digital skill and offers a good online collaborative option. I could even see using Google Slides to make infographics. I tend toward using Google workspace because my learners are used to the UI and are less intimidated by it.