Incorporating Graphic Design in the Classroom

Being able to create graphics using tech tools today is comparable to being able to color inside the lines back when I was a kid. It's a skill students need to have in this digital age.  Thank goodness it's a fun one for most kids and thanks to all the evolving tech tools available, it's getting easier and easier to do in the classroom.  I love creating things that are visually pleasing but it does take time.  I would certainly like to create and share more graphics with my students since having key visuals really does help, but more importantly giving them the tools and time to create their own is crucial.  By having students create their own graphic designs around their learning, we're supporting them as they learn in different ways.  This not only appeals to our creative and visual learners, but to all learners.

As a society, we're expected to absorb and react to information at a neck-breaking pace.  Visuals allow us to do that.  That's why the saying, "a picture tells a thousand words," is so true.  Having a visual helps us have an anchor for our knowledge and a way to organize and retrieve it from our brain.  So as we're looking to support the learners in our classroom, having common visuals to refer to, or asking students to make their own, is definitely one way to help our students cement their knowledge.

Myself and another teacher co-sponsor our school's student council.  We host school events throughout the year, and advertising for them is a big part of that.  I made the image on the left in Pages for a parent flyer for our STEAM night.  We needed a logo that wasn't copyrighted and we wanted it to be uniquely ours.  What's funny is that I made this, and then a student made a hand drawing.  Neither one of us had seen the each other's work.  Look at how similar they are! Teaching our student council members some of these tech tools for graphic design seems like our next activity!  We certainly have some very creative and talented students who would love to learn how to make cool graphics.  Student Council ended up using both of these on posters and thank you notes.  Isn't there just something about kids' drawings that make them so endearing?

My graphic design

Student's Beautiful Artwork