About a week ago I was asked if I could write a post about tools for making infographics with students. A well constructed infographic can convey a lot of information in a compact, visually-pleasing manner. The process of creating a good infographic requires students to analyze and succinctly summarize data and facts that they’ve gathered through research. Here are some good tools that students can use to create infographics.
Canva is always the first tool that comes to mind when I’m asked about creating infographics. Canva offers a large variety of templates for creating infographics. Those templates can be modified with free clip art, drawings, and your images. The catalog of fonts that Canva offers will not leave your students wanting for more options. Canva recently added the option to collaborate on designs. Many of Canva’s templates can be published as simple webpages too. Finally, Canva has a great education section in which you will find lesson plans created by teachers. A couple of my Canva tutorials are embedded below.
iVisual Info Touch is an iPad app that you can use to create relatively simple infographics. The app makes it easy to create your infographics. It is not necessary to create an account in order to use iVisual Info Touch. To get started just open the app and select a background for your infographic. After choosing your background you can add clip art and text. When you are finished designing your infographic, you can save it directly to your iPad’s camera roll. iVisual Info Touch is available in a free version and in a paid version ($2.99). The paid version includes more clip art, more backgrounds, and allows you to import and insert your own images.
Posting your students’ infographics online is one way to display them. A computer screen or a phone screen often doesn’t show the full effect of an infographic. Printing your students’ infographics in full size can be accomplished with Block Posters. Block Posters is a web-based tool to which you can upload a high quality graphic then divide it into letter-sized chunks for printing. Print out each section and put them together on a poster board to make your own poster.
