I have used Microsoft Powerpoint for several years, and I never pressed the SmartArt button in the Insert Tab. It has many useful templates to use for making posters, infographics, concept maps, and more. I have made similar designs by hand before and spent quite a long time on them. I just made a quick one with SmartArt and it’s not perfect, but it works well enough. 

An image of an organization chart of Types of Bread. There are three columns. The first column is the category Quick Breads with Scones, Waffles, and Irish Soda Bread under it. The second column is the category Yeast Breads with Marble Rye Bread, Focaccia, and Cinnamon Buns. The third column is the category Sourdough with the three examples being Amish Friendship Bread, Sourdough Rye Bread, and Injera.

 I now plan to try using powerpoint or google slides for making classroom tools such as exit tickets and worksheets with images and fill in the blanks. The tool to remove background images is very useful for creating graphics or memes for class. There are even 3D animals, plants, objects, cells, and molecules to explore for science. There are also realistic and drawn stock images to add to projects to encourage dual coding.

An image of three 3D intestines in different orientations

There is also an interactive graph creator called Power BI. It may be worth exploring for when I need to show graphs in class. I have never used Photoshop or similar programs before, so starting with Microsoft Powerpoint feels the most comfortable. If I start running into things that I can’t easily do on powerpoint, I may try those programs out.