By Fiona Price –  winner of our “Write for us” competition.

 

A tech tool I’ve been exploring recently and one I’m really keen to promote is the free online infographic maker by Canva.

What is an infographic?

The best definition I found comes from Wikipedia:

Why Use Infographics ?

I made this infographic using a Canva template to highlight reasons why they are such a good idea to use for teaching and learning:

 

5 reasons to use by Fiona Price

How to use infographics in the classroom


Having explored the potential for using infographics and having had a go at creating some myself, I was keen to apply this to the classroom and looked at some suggestions in Nik Peachey’s ebook 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy based around authentic infographics.


I chose Mind your Waste as I am teaching Pre-Advanced learners who are interested in going on to further study in art & design or fashion. I followed the stages in the lesson plan to set up an initial discussion, establish the topic, activate interest and background knowledge and then to use the infographic for reading skills development: scanning for specific information followed by a detailed reading stage and post reading discussion.  I really recommend this resource as it has excellent ideas for follow-up tasks to develop digital literacy and critical thinking skills.


I followed up the next day with an article from the Guardian on textile waste in Britain.  After exploiting the text for reading skills development and comparing the data to that given in the infographic about the USA, I gave the learners a writing task:

Using the Mind your Waste (in the USA) infographic as an example,  either create an infographic using a Canva template about textile waste in Britain, using the statistics given in the reading text as your source, OR  do some research on textile waste in your country and use that data as your source. 

Most were keen to research the topic in their countries. I encouraged them to make a plan and use post-it-notes to organise ideas as suggested in Exploiting Infographics by Nik Peachey.


I am so excited to see the result and have made a Padlet in preparation for when they are ready to publish. They can share by getting the link to their published infographic and copying and pasting to the Padlet so we can all see everyone’s infographic on global textile waste.  ?

Bio: I am an English language teacher, a CELTA teacher trainer & EAP tutor with an MA in Educational Technology & TESOL.from the University of Manchester.

Blog