Using Easel.ly to Create Infographics in the Classroom

Author: Megan Schonhar (Greer Middle College Charter High School)

In the gap years between being a high school student and becoming a high school teacher, I noticed a shift in the definition of writing from being mostly–if not exclusively–text-based to becoming increasingly graphic in nature. This shift, a merging of visual design and written text, is captured in the concept of the infographic, a visual representation of information that typically includes data. Infographics are designed to be clearly and quickly read–in a social media post, on a bulletin board in a community center, or even on the wall of a public restroom.

If we as educators are serious about preparing our students for twenty-first century literacy, we must concede that the texts they use, in both reading and writing, are varied and quite often digitally created. With my freshmen high school students, I decided to merge instruction in reading, research, writing, and design into a unit built around social justice issues. Our tool to communicate important messages about social justice? Infographics!

You may have heard of the various websites that help everyday writers design infographics–the most popular seem to be Piktochart, Infogr.am, and Easel.ly. After creating an account with each site and perusing their options, I chose Easel.ly for my classroom due to its accessibility and free content. While there is an app available through the iTunes App Store, my students used the website on our laptops and Chromebooks.

Creating an account with easel.ly is quite simple: select “sign up free” at the top of the page and then enter your email address and create a password. From the home page, you can either choose a template to start with, or start from scratch by selecting “start fresh.” I encouraged my high school students to start fresh so that they could better customize their infographics.

Screenshot of the homepage after signing in at easel.ly
Screenshot of the homepage after signing in at easel.ly

With a blank canvas, students have the option of choosing a background color/ image and document orientation. Then, there are different categories of objects, shapes, charts, and textbooks Easel.ly offers that students can drag onto their canvases. Another great feature that opens seemingly unlimited options is the “upload” icon, where students can add files to their canvases. Many of my students chose to upload images and charts to their infographics, especially when the precise object needed was not available through the Easel.ly offerings.

Screenshot of the “start fresh” option with directions--delete directions from background by selecting “clear” at the top of the screen.
Screenshot of the “start fresh” option with directions–delete directions from background by selecting “clear” at the top of the screen.

Once students have created their infographics, they can save their work to their account and then download the infographic as an image or PDF file. My students downloaded their infographics as PDF files, dropped them in their shared Google Drive folders, and then printed them to display around the school in hard copy. The publication can be easily adapted to digital environments by having them post their work on class websites and/or to social media accounts via link (offered at the top of the project page) or image file.

Students were engaged in using the visual and non-traditional medium of the infographic to convey the most important ideas related to their chosen social justice topics. This project gave them the opportunity to learn about credibility of sources, the selection of relevant and discarding of irrelevant information, and the organization of content and text. They were challenged to be concise and incorporate elements of visual art and design. They also had to cite their sources, which helped them to understand the importance of authority and credibility in their scholarship.

A few caveats: You will need to model the easel.ly features to your students. To do so, I created a few sample infographics about easily-accessible topics while they watched and jotted down notes. We also had some conversations about the importance of visual “themes” and using coordinating colors and objects to create unity in the infographic. To help them better understand the genre, we examined numerous mentor texts and discussed their design features. Finally, I implemented a workshop model for this unit so that I could better reach individual students through individual and small-group conferences. Some students will need more help and guidance than others in each major category–design, research, writing, and publication– and conferences enabled me to reach that level of differentiation.

I recommend using Easel.ly in your classroom to help students broaden their literacy horizons!

Megan Schonhar

 

 

 

Megan Schonhar is a high school English teacher in her sixth year of teaching at Greer Middle College Charter High School in South Carolina. She is also a graduate student in the education department at Furman University. Her research interests include teacher and student motivation, instructional technology, and literacy.

 

 

My Digital Natives as Published Storytellers

Author: Sarah Liebenrood, 4th Grade Teacher, Greenville, South Carolina

“When the story of these times gets written, we want it to say that we did all we could, and it was more than anyone could have imagined.”-Bono

Imagine a classroom where students are all published authors. Students are engaged in their learning and are seeing themselves as real published authors. This classroom is no longer something of the imagination. Technology in the classroom has made this vision a reality…a powerful reality. As teachers, our goal each day to help students realize and reach their full potential. We express to them the importance literacy plays in their daily lives. Each day, we scaffold students into becoming independent thinkers, readers and writers. When a child finally comes to the realization that they are authors and what they are reading and writing are important, we, as teachers, have reached our full potential. Literacy instruction should be student-centered, with the majority of instruction in the “you do” portion of the lesson. Technology in the classroom has made it very simple to transform your classroom into a student-centered learning environment. It is up to you as a teacher to make sure the students are engaged, motivated, and taking learning into their own hands.

In my classroom, both first and fourth grade, I have been fortunate enough to work in a school that has a 1:1 iPad Program. When I first began using iPads in the classroom, I was very reluctant to allow students to completely take learning in to their own hands. In the beginning, I was the skeptical teacher that still wanted students to complete their writing pieces with paper and pencil. Although I do believe in a balance, I quickly found that using technology increases student motivation and engagement. When my students are motivated and engaged, it increases their performance, especially with the writing pieces that they are producing. Using one of my favorite apps, students have worked toward a goal of becoming a published author, multiple times each school year.

The app that has completely revolutionized my writing instruction is Book Creator by Red Jumper ($4.99 in the App Store). This app is powerful! Book Creator has functionalities that allow students to create their own eBooks, add photographs, personal illustrations, voice recordings, and videos. This is digital storytelling at its finest hour.  The best part is how easy the eBooks are to share. They books can be open in iBooks, e-mailed, or saved in a cloud storage such as Google Drive or Dropbox. iBooks shows published piece, complete with virtual turning of the pages!

How can I use Book Creator to make my students published authors?

Whether you are in a 1:1 classroom, using one iPad cart to share or iPad per classroom, you can turn your students into published digital storytellers. In my classroom, in both first and fourth grade, my students go through the writing process. They begin each piece with a prewriting activity, usually a graphic organizer, then continue on to draft, revise and edit their piece as much as they need to in order to make it their personal best. Once students are ready to publish, they use their iPads to begin the publishing process. The students first create a book cover with the title and either a photograph they have taken or an illustration they have drawn using a drawing app (Doodle Buddy or My Arts). Next, they create the title page and continue on to type their writing. This is usually the part of the day when I hear squeals (yes, even fourth graders get this excited). “Mrs. Liebenrood, it’s starting to look like a REAL book!” This is their epiphany that they are REAL writers. The students continue to write and illustrate their book in its entirety. Students then go back through and use the record feature to record their own voices reading their writing. Finally, when students have finished, they open their books in iBooks and are ready to read, share, rejoice, and celebrate their published piece.

Can I use Book Creator for Interactive Notebooking?

Yes, yes, and YES! I have started using Book Creator for Interactive Notebooking in Social Studies. This was a realization that I had over the summer when I was planning for my new content area. I was so excited to start the school year by having my students create their Interactive Notebooks with Book Creator. The prefix “inter” means an action between two things and with all the features of Book Creator, especially the voice record, students can easily interact with their notes in an engaging way that gives every child a voice.

My students are using their Interactive Social Studies notebooks to interact with the curriculum and take ownership over their learning by using their voice recordings, photographs, maps, illustrations, and text.  Interactive Notebooking has made it extremely easy to integrate literacy skills into the content areas.  Students are able to record themselves summarizing the material, making connections, identifying important fact, and more. Students can easily add photographs, maps, labels, captions and other nonfiction text features.  They are creating their own personal Social Studies informational texts. Creating their own informational texts aids in their comprehension and allows them to explore features of the genre. For each unit, we begin as a new chapter in their book. Each student adds the title and our essential question for the unit for the first page of the chapter. Next, they add to their notebooks each day with graphic organizers from our notes, photographs and maps with labels and captions, and text that explain the content area. Students add headings, bold and italicize important key words to their pages that come together in what looks like their own text book. Students just reading informational text and taking notes in not as engaging as having students create their own books. By creating their own interactive notebooks, it allows students to be immersed in informational text and really take a different approach to studying the genre. Students are applying their learning of the features of informational text on a daily basis.

As educators, we all know that reading and writing share a critical reciprocal relationship. When students become better readers, they become better writers and vice versa. The power of technology with digital storytelling and interactive notebooks allows that reciprocal relationship to flourish; making a high-tech student-centered classroom while increasing literacy abilities one published eBook at a time!