How can you stay strong?

Nowadays, healthy habits are in the spotlight. Thus, teachers ought to be conscious of them and promote that lifestyle inside and outside the classroom. Specifically, there are several curricular contents related to this area (such as Natural Science subject or Physical Education). 

Consequently, I have designed an infographic to explain to my students the different nutrients and which is the proper amount of them in a healthy diet. 

What does an infographic mean?

First and foremost, I would like to explain to you briefly infographics' functions. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an infographic (or information graphic) is “a visual representation of information or data”. 

We need to be conscious that every student learns in a different way - visual learners exist too! In other words, infographics are a valuable tool for visual communication and learning. Consequently, there are multiple diagrams to help this kind of students to understand a topic in a different and efficient way. I am a visual learner too, and these tools really help me to study!

Furthermore, these resources enable learners to focus on the key points and transmit the knowledge in an organised way. I strongly recommend you checking this post to understand better this tool and its real appliance in a classroom. 

However, creating a proper infographic is not an easy pie. A great infographic must grab viewers' attention and don’t let go. Luckily, there are multiple online resources such as Padlet, Tackk, Easel.ly, Piktochart, Smore, Mural or Canva.

Have you ever heard of them? I had used Padlet, Piktochart and Canva before. When it comes to infographics, Canva is the winner.

Canva is killing it! 🏆 

Canva is a free graphic design platform that enables its users to make invitations, business cards, flyers, lesson plans, and so on through designed templates. 

Beyond that templates, pictures can be added too. Additionally, there are several drawings, gifs, shapes, emojis, etc., that can be applied to templates. Let's take a look at their features:

• Templates: As it has been described above, there are several templates - more than 50,000! Thus, finding a suitable template for you is quite easy. 
• Uploaded files: Beyond the features provided by Canva, you can upload pictures to add them to the template.
• Photos: Multiple images are freely provided by this platform.
• Elements: you can look for icons and shapes in that section. There are animated elements too. 
• Text: Canva supplies lots of letter fonts whose format and height can be altered.
• Audio: Songs can be played in templates. However, they are for a fee. 
• Video: Free videos are displayed to insert them in the template.

Beyond these characteristics, this platform is very intuitive and, from the very beginning, you are able to create amazing visual pieces without a lot of training. All teachers recommend this website to create materials in an easy manner. 

Inphographing a healthy diet 🍽️

As it was mentioned before, designing an infographic is quite complex. There are several steps that you can follow to create a proper infographic. Thus, we are analysing these steps within my infographic regarding a healthy diet.

1. Title: It is very engaging since it is a question and helps the reader to think about the contents and to be introduced to the topic.
2. The body is one of the most important parts because it provides information about the topic. Thus, that information must be gathered in an attractive way. That is the reason why a pyramid has been chosen. Furthermore, coloured bars, narrows, pictures are established. 
3. Explanatory texts are used to provide extra information to fully understand the graphic. In this particular case, there is a glossary to specify specific vocabulary. Furthermore, at the beginning of the picture, there is an introductory text to completely comprehend what a diet and nutrients mean.
4. Source: As its name indicates, it is essential to indicate where the information has been based on. Thus, the concrete textbook is cited (next to the book emoji, at the right part).  
5. Authorship and license. The importance of authorship has been discussed in previous posts. Therefore, the concrete license must be established (located on the lower right part). 

Food groups - Blog Post de Patricia Rubio

Is Canva good enough? 🤔

I have designed several resources: infographics, checklist, presentations and worksheets through Canva and I consider it an AMAZING platform! 

👌 The amount of free templates and elements makes Canva a perfect tool for creating any kind of material. Even though there are some features for a fee, it is free for teachers! 

👌 The fact that you can add any picture for free makes the template much more personalised. 

👌 You can share the template with whomever you want and edit online the template at the same time. It makes colleagues' collaboration much easier. 

I am so sorry, but I do not see any disadvantage in using Canva. I really love it! Do you find any con? I would really like to know it. I am conscious that sometimes teachers find creating individualised materials difficult... Fortunately, these platforms help us a lot!

See you in the next post and take care!