Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Class Syllabus Infographic

Handing out a paper syllabus is so 2008... haha! I thought I'd try something new and creative for my students this year and appeal to their visual sense as well as make the information easier to understand and process for students and parents. Here's where I got my "pinspiration":


I decided to try to build one from scratch and it took just as long as you think it would! I ended up using Piktochart, just as the owner of the above syllabus did. Making an account was easy. I just used my work Google account and signed up for the free account immediately. It took less than a minute.

They have pre-designed templates that you can choose from, so I found one that seemed like it would fit my purpose. I chose the Minimalist template and got to work! I opened my traditional syllabus and began conveying the information that was already available onto the template. I decided that I wanted the information to be chunked in blocks like the one I found online, but I wanted to use a bit more color. See for yourself:


I'm really proud of how it came out! While it's not perfect, I don't think it's too bad for a first try! I really wanted to print a big size from my classroom, but I had to get a little creative because the poster maker at work can only print from PDFs... so I Googled "JPG to PDF converter" and used the first site that came up to convert it! It worked great. If I had the Pro version of Piktochart I would have been able to simply download it as a PDF, but they only give you the options of low to medium resolution JPG or PNG files. You also have to put up with having their logo on the bottom. Not a big deal really... especially since I just cut it off on my poster! 

When you opt for pro, you also get access to their full library of templates, no logo on the bottom, and way more upload space. I'm fine with the free account for now, but if I use this much more, I might ask my school district to look into it for me. Pro is priced at $29 a month (!) but if you're an educational institution or non-profit organization, you can get it for $39.99 a year.

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