Canva and Infographics and the Essay

A Visual Essay

The traditional essay assignment receives its fair share of criticism from progressive educators and ed-tech types and some of these arguments have merit. Several years back, I bookmarked this article from Slate. The author provocatively suggested- and it ignited a mini-firestorm- that colleges should stop assigning essays to students arguing among other things that for much of history, exams were oral. Indeed, the author goes on to write that the Greeks and Romans wrote epics, plays, dialogues, and treatises and that they composed speeches without using the essay. It does make one wonder how the essay seized its singular place as the way to demonstrate knowledge.

Thanks to Google and Wikipedia, I now know that that Montaigne was the first to write, or at the very least name, the essay. As a literary form, it is about 450 years old. This post gives some explanation on how the essay became the standard school assignment.

Of course, we know that some disciplines have never embraced the essay. The poster is the standard format for sharing research findings in the social and natural sciences. Poster sessions dominate in higher ed conferences as well as in traditional middle and high school science fairs. Folks in the humanities have never embraced this visual genre in any significant way.

I do believe the essay has significant value for the type of thinking it helps to develop. I assign essays. I just did. Sometimes, however, I want my students to create something visual instead of writing an essay. As an ed-tech integrationist who also teaches in the humanities, I’ve come to believe that being able to make a point through visual means is an important component of literacy.

Thus, as a culmination/ summative assessment of a week-long simulation in my IR class in which I assigned students to argue four different foreign policy options, I asked students to write an “Option 5” using infographics and charged them with telling me what they think is the best option.

As I wrote to my students in giving them this assignment,  “Magazine ads, banner ads on websites, billboards on highways and busses. Visuals are everywhere. Yet rarely do we ask you to consider this in the classroom. As Karen Schramm points out (she’s cited in the Read, Write, Think link below) 85% of what we know is gathered from visual perception.”

Recently, I’ve been struck by the power of the infographic. Good ones allow for visual rhetoric. Arguments are augmented and advanced by spatial arrangements. Infographics can also require the same type of thinking that is required in a successful essay.

Before getting started, I shared some examples of effective infographics and talked about what made a good infographic. I modified a rubric I found through Read, Write, Think and then we looked through some terrific infographics from the dailyinfographic.com 

To make their infographics, I encourage students to use Canva or Piktochart. I also showed them how to use Google Drawings as an alternative. Once finished, they posted their finished infographics to a Padlet wall. One can easily have students post finished infographics to a Canvas Discussion Board.

I am really pleased with how the finished projects turned out. One of my two favorites graces the bottom of this post. Infographics promoted the type of thinking a good persuasive essay demands of students. Yet it also did more.  I admit to being less clear on what that “more” exactly is. But there was a difference in understanding in some students for having made the infographic instead of writing an essay. It demanded more care. I also think the answer lies somewhere in the fact that graphically representing the thinking process, lets students organize their thinking in a different way.

Final point and full disclosure. I believe in giving students agency- real choice. Students were also allowed to write a traditional persuasive essay or give a presentation instead of making the infographic. .

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I gave this infographic assignment to my US history class. This was part of a unit on historiography and the nature of the American Revolution. It very successfully captures the arguments from that school of historians.

Don’t Forget Google. #1

1st in a series of reminders about Google’s education tools.

For much of the past two years, many of our posts have been about Canvas. There are a whole lot of obvious reasons for that. But don’t forget, that we are still a Google School. One of Google’s richest tools is its Google Arts and Culture.

Click the image to go to Google Arts and Culture. There is so much there.

 

For instance, check out its Black History Month page.  Among its wide array of resources, there’s an interesting interview with Questlove talking about his Summer of Soul movie.

Tech Training!

FCIT is hosting lunch and learn sessions over the next three months.

Come spend some time learning some new technology tools that seamlessly integrate with Canvas.

Where and When: We will meet D and E days at all 3 lunch blocks down in the tech suites.

We will start this Friday and Monday by exploring Canva. It’s quite powerful and it’s easily accessible. Come on down to the tech suites for one or both days.

We will continue to explore Canva on February 23 and 24. 


Canva is a graphic design platform that’s great for making posters, presentations, infographics, and a whole lot more. Its drag and drop interface makes customizing thousands of templates simple and easy. 
Here are 10 Ways to Use Canva in the classroom. Come down to the tech suites to learn this tool.
Did you know you can make videos with Canva? Here’s just a taste. This promo intro. video was made with Canva.

Our List of Services by Alex McDonnell

Google Meet Companion Mode

Google Meet has recdently introduced Companion Mode. 

FCS teachers will find it useful for two reasons.

  1. It allows those in a blended meeting setting- class, faculty meeting, and team meetings- in which some are together physically and others are attending remotely- to participate equally via Google Meet.
  2. It will allow presenters- meeting leaders, teachers- to present more easily.
    • Join the meeting on one device in Present Mode, then join with a second device in Companion Mode which basically joins the 2nd device only as a screen sharing device and also turns off audio and webcam.

This is actually very helpful if you want to share a presentation on one device or screen and you’re already otherwise on the call with another. Feedback echoes are eliminated.

It’s also more efficient to share a screen using Companion Mode. When screen sharing is only on one device, we lose the ability to see the Meet. In Companion Mode, there is no toggling back and forth.
Here’s an official overview from Google Meet.
Final Tip: Did you know that you can cast to an existing meeting straight from Google Slides?
1) Open up Google Slides
2) Look at the button to the left of your slideshow button in the
top right corner. It looks like a box with an up arrow.
3) Hover over it and you’re going to see it’s labeled present to a meeting.

How to Copy a Canvas Course

With the second semester upon us, some will want a reminder on how to copy a Canvas course. A video tutorial of the steps listed below is at the bottom.

1) In Course Navigation on left-hand side of the course page, click the Settings link.

Open Settings

2) Then on Right-hand menu click “Copy Course Content”

Copy Course Content

3) Select Migration Content

Select Migration Content

To import all content from the course, select the All Content radio button [1].

If you want to take only some content, click the Select specific content radio button [2].

4) Remember To Turn Off Due Dates

Here is a video showing these steps.

 

Introducing Canva

Friends,

We are pleased to share that we’ve recently launched Canva for Education school-wide! Canva makes it easy to create, collaborate, and communicate visually – in the classroom and beyond. If you’ve never heard of Canva for Education, you can learn more about the tool here.  And click here to go to Canva.

With Canva for Education, you can create education presentations, lesson plans, worksheets, reports, posters, and more. You can empower your students through authentic assessments and tasks, enabling them to create beautiful, real-world deliverables quickly and easily. You can use Canva for student assignments and enable real-time collaboration on Canva projects.

Everyone with an FCS email address will receive all the benefits of Canva for Education, including all of Canva’s “pro” features, at no cost and with no validation or application required. You can log in to our new Canva team with your FCS Google credentials at www.canva.com. You can also log in using the link on your Canvas classes. All students have access to Canva as well!

Please take some time to review this teacher onboarding guide from the team at Canva. We encourage everyone to review these materials, as there are some aspects of the FCS Canva platform that will differ from what you may be used to if you’ve already used Canva. If you already have a Canva account under your district email address it’s especially important to pay attention to the pages that have to do with logging in, switching teams, and copying files. You can view just those pages in Canva’s Login Instructions, here.

If you have any questions about Canva or would like to learn more about using Canva in the classroom, you can contact us at FCIT. There are also lots of great resources available at designschool.canva.com.  Finally, note that Canva integrates seamlessly with Canvas. It’s a powerful presentation tool that we look forward to sharing with you.

Sincerely,

FCIT

 

Introducing Canva (with Canva) – just a small taste.