My First Infographic Made With Easel.ly:
For my very first infographic shown below, I used an app called Easel.ly. The Easel.ly app can be purchased on your apple device through the apple store for FREE! Easel.ly can also be accessed online through its website. According to the iTunes, app store, "Easel.ly is a simple web tool that empowers anyone to create and share powerful visuals...no design experience needed! We provide the canvas, you provide the creativity. Our mission is to change the way people view and share information." I completely agree with this description of the app. It is so easy to use no matter if you have design experience or not. There are also plenty of tutorials on how to use this app! I actually made the infographic below using the website because I found it easier to place and resize the shapes, text, color, etc. on the canvas. I chose to use Easel.ly because I had never heard of this app/website before. I thought it would be a fun app/website to learn more about by playing around with the features it provides for free. What another great resource I now know how to use for my classroom someday!
Before completing this assignment, I had never heard of infographics before. I had seen plenty of them, however, I did not know that is what they were called. I began this project by going on Pinterest to look for different ideas. I found several ideas and decided to actually create a "Infographic" board. On this board, I pinned infographics that I found particularly interesting or that I thought I could use in my classroom someday. I found several that I thought would be very useful in an elementary classroom. I based my idea of this STEM infographic off of those pins. I am an Elementary Education major with an emphasis in Mathematics so I thought this was the perfect idea of something I will be able to use in my future classroom in the near future to introduce STEM activities to my class. After figuring out what I wanted to make my infographic about, I began exploring different apps to see which one would be the easiest for me to use. I watched the tutorials of each app. I do not have very much design experience so I decided to use easel.ly. After watching the tutorial for this app, I knew it would be simple enough for me to use. I played around with the free app on my iPad first. Easel.ly offers a bunch of different templates, however, I started with a blank canvas for mine. The app was kind of frustrating to me because the pictures, shapes, and text that I added were very touchy and kept moving around when I was not trying to move them. If I even barely touched them, they moved out of the place I had previously placed them. I got aggravated with the app so I decided to try the website. The website was much easier to use. The pictures, shapes, and texts were not near as touchy because you had to physically click on them with the computer mouse in order to move them. Personally, I liked the website much better than the app. I was able to easily change colors, fonts, sizes of objects, add media, add shapes, add text, etc. I really liked how I could just drag an arrow to widen/lengthen my infographic as I designed and needed more space. Easel.ly had several shapes, objects, media that was free to upload, which was very handy. However, in order to use several of the really cool objects, pictures, etc, users have to pay additional money for them in order to upgrade. You could also only download a low quality pdf of the infographic you created. If you wanted a high quality pdf, you have to pay additional money. I was honestly pleased with my low quality version. I didn't think there was really anything wrong my low quality download. These are really the only limitations this app has. As you can see, this app/website offers many great features that are easy to use! I will definitely be using easel.ly in my future classroom. I can use it to make posters/infographics to hang around my classroom. I could also have my students research information and data over a specific topic and have them create their very own infographic to share with the class. This would be a fun way to keep the students engaged in meaningful learning. The students could use this app/websites for various assignments, whether they are creating a poster for something or an infographic. Infographics can be used in almost any subject area. It'll challenge the students to think about layout and organization. I had a lot of fun creating my infographic and think the students would really enjoy it too. What better way to introduce or even conclude a lesson than with a bright and vibrant visual! I highly recommend this free app to anyone, but especially educators! In my opinion, both the teachers and the students should have access to this app for different projects and assignments! Download and start using this app NOW! |