Revista simpozionului Eficienta si calitate in educatie 2018 Revista simpozionului | Page 66

Using infographics is another way of providing our students with the content to study at
home. Pinterest provides many materials that are readily available and can be used with
ease; alternatively, we can create our own infographics using the tools available online.
One of these tools is Piktochart, which allows you to include text and links to websites,
embed video, add images, charts or maps in it. The infographic can then be shared and
played as a presentation by students at home.
https://www.pinterest.com/MigueCorDi/english-infographics-english-language-teaching/?autologin=true
www.piktochart.com
For more advanced students, DailyInfographic (www.dailyinfographic.com/blog) offers
texts accompanied by visuals (pictures and infographics), which are tagged according to
the area of interest (education, marketing, technology, movies, animals, entertainment,
food, social media, health, lifestyle, etc.). These materials can be the starting point of
numerous CLIL and creative activities. After reading the text, students can engage in
class discussions followed by creative writing activities, projects (including creating their
own infographics) or any other research activities.
Personalising the classes according to the students’ interests is extremely beneficial in
increasing their motivation. Music can be one such subject of interest for students and the
blog post The Magic of Music contains thought provoking questions such as: Why do
songs get stuck in my head? or Am I really “tone deaf”? The answer to each question
contains links to studies that can be read depending on how interested the students are in
each topic. The text itself is followed by highly illustrative infographics
(http://www.dailyinfographic.com/blog/magic-of-music). Students can then be prompted to
do research on other areas related to music, types of music or auditory phenomena.
These activities develop students’ critical thinking as well as visualisation and work skills
while providing fun authentic material which is easy to access.
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