Creating & Using Graphics

I have always found it eas­i­er to under­stand con­cepts when there is a visu­al aspect to accom­pa­ny a text, so learn­ing about the the­o­ry of two sep­a­rate chan­nels just made sense to me. Pro­vid­ing stu­dents with both visu­al and audi­to­ry mate­r­i­al cre­ates more oppor­tu­ni­ties for them to process what they are learn­ing. I think about the dif­fer­ences in the way I process infor­ma­tion while read­ing a text­book fea­tur­ing lit­tle to no visu­als, com­pared to watch­ing a Crash Course video. I often find myself los­ing mean­ing while read­ing through para­graphs and hav­ing to back-track to ful­ly under­stand the text. Like­wise, the colour­ful graph­ics that accom­pa­ny Crash Course’s edu­ca­tion­al videos serve a great pur­pose. The fast-paced deliv­ery of the con­tent is matched with rel­e­vant, cap­ti­vat­ing graph­ics, mak­ing it easy to keep up with the lecture.

Using graph­ics to present your con­tent to stu­dents can either make or break the way it is processed; this depends on how rel­e­vant your graph­ics are to the text. Rel­e­van­cy is the most impor­tant aspect to keep in mind when choos­ing or design­ing graph­ics for your text. If you are pre­sent­ing stu­dents with a text about WWII, accom­pa­ny­ing that text with graph­ics of ice­cream cones or race­cars will only cause con­fu­sion. The graph­ic needs to be rel­e­vant to the con­cept it is pre­sent­ed with, and should fur­ther clar­i­fy the text. Think­ing about graph­ic-use this week remind­ed me of a his­to­ry class I took last year. The pro­fes­sor would include rebus­es in his slideshows every­day, adding a fun activ­i­ty for the class to par­tic­i­pate in, as well as pro­vide a visu­al to con­nect con­cepts with.

Using graph­ics is also just a real­ly great way to get kids engaged. Once you’re com­fort­able cre­at­ing graph­ics, it becomes pret­ty easy to quick­ly whip up a fun image for kids to inter­act with. I think this would be real­ly great for dai­ly check-ins, stu­dent sur­veys, or just a fun activ­i­ty to help you get to know your stu­dents a lit­tle better!