Making charts in Canva

Canva is a great tool for generating graphics-- everything from logos to posters to infographics.   I was just using it today and noticed the new Charts feature.  What's great about it is that you can edit the data (unlike some graphics app, where a chart is really just an image of a chart).

Here's a screenshot of a bar chart creation:

Give it a try!  As always, I'm happy to help.

Digital poster projects

(Originally posted 1/7/11)

If you have a project that involves students designing a poster, consider a digital tool.

Why? Digital posters are

• Multi-media- incorporate images, video, and sound.
• Multi-dimensional- use hyperlinks and “hot-spots” to extend.
• Sharable- beyond the classroom.
• Engaging- students tend to enjoy working with digital tools

How?
Here are some tools to consider (with examples of actual student work):

• Glogster http://felicia22.edu.glogster.com/grapesofwrath
• Prezi http://prezi.com/pq1f-tgzlefi/the-battle-at-the-nile/
• VuVox Collage http://www.vuvox.com/collage/detail/0ac64b387
• Students can also use productivity tools such as Google Presentation (great for embedded YouTube video), Google Sites, or Microsoft Powerpoint.

Students can be given the choice of which tool to use, with the constant being the content to be "displayed." I would love to come into your class and support this kind of project.

More word cloud tools

You probably have seen Wordle, the tool that analyzes text for word frequency, then arranges the words graphically (the Advisory wordle is a good example of this). There are other tools that are similar and are worth a try. Here are two:

Tagxedo is much like Wordle, expect that it allows you to decide the shape of the final image. Here, for example, is our course catalog in the shape of a hawk (note that these screen shots are not as much fun as the online version- try it yourself and you'll see what I mean):


WordSift is not as pretty as the others, but clicking on a word in WordSift brings up images and a visual thesaurus representation. This might be especially useful for ELL students. Again, here's our course catalog:


Unfortunately, neither of these have built-in printing, so you need to take a screen shot if you want them on paper.

Want more? Here's a blog post that discusses other word cloud tools:
http://www.techlearning.com/default.aspx?tabid=67&entryid=364