An infographic is a visual representation of information. It
is the act of taking raw data and turning it into visual forms that the human
brain can easily access and process. Teaching with infographics can be
beneficial to students, because it can be a jumping start for learning,
providing visual information for students to understand. Having students create
their own infographics to demonstrate learning requires critical thinking and
provides students practice with charts, graphs, and maps – all essential skills
that students will be expected to understand on standardized tests (Schulten,
2010). Diana Laufenberg states “Infographics
work in the classroom because they grab students and allow an entry point to
learning — and because they sum up pages and pages, even chapters, of
information that would take a reader hours to process” (as quoted in Shulten,
2010).
So how do we create an infographic? When creating an
infographic, we need to have information and data. Once we have the data, it is
our job to analyze the data and determine what information we need to translate
into visual data. According to Alberto Cairo, in his podcast with Connie
Malamed, a question we need to ask ourselves is, “what is it more likely that
my audience, the people who are going to see this graphic, are going to try to
do with this graphic?” (Malamed). For my
infographic, I accessed research about book consumption in the United States from
the PEW Research Center (www.pewinternet.org)
(Perrin, 2018).
Once we have spent some time analyzing the information and
determining what information we would like to represent visually, we can begin
to create our infographic. Some of the websites that can assist with creating
infographics are Piktochart (https://create.piktochart.com),
Infogram https://infogram.com), and Easelly
(https://www.easel.ly/). Here are some of my thoughts on each of these
websites.
Easelly had several templates to choose from, but one of the
problems that I noticed with this website is that the options were kind of
limited. In order to “unlock” more options of images, charts, etc., you need to
“Go Pro” and upgrade for $4.00 a month. Other than the slim amount of choices,
the site was fairly easy to use. The text was easy to change with a
double-click and it was simple to move objects around on the infographic. When I
wanted to add a pictogram to my infographic, I did have some trouble getting the pictogram
images to change to something relevant to my topic, rather than the default
strawberry or popsicle image. While I feel that this website is very basic, it might be a great starting point for students to begin to explore infographics.
Piktochart was very easy to use and had a nice variety of
different images, shapes, photos and photo frames that can be added to an
infographic. This website actually had the most variety of images that I was
looking for that had to do with books (which was the topic of my information).
The search bar made it even easier to find images that were relevant to my
topic. The tool bar at the top of the infographic made it easy for users to work
with the different elements on the page. For example, users can change the
colors, the opacity, alignment, arrangement, etc. The Piktochart infographic has different “sections”
of information that users can customize, versus the one big “chart” that users
are adding to while using the other websites (Easelly & Infogram) for their
design. This website definitely had a lot more options to choose from, but at
times it seemed a little overwhelming to view all of the options that were available.
What I liked best about this website was the simplicity of use. Everything was
easy to customize and use to represent information in the infographic.
This was the website that I chose to use to create my infographic.
The templates were very clean and it was easy to choose one where I felt
comfortable manipulating the images and information. The options for adding
information and elements were located on the left-hand side of the page, where
I could choose what I wanted to add and simply drag it into the infographic.
There were multiple choices for text, charts, maps, images, shapes and options
to add other types of media including youtube videos, vimeo videos,
slideshares, flickr images, urls, etc. Data could be uploaded from different
forms, such as a .xls file, a .csv file, a Google Drive spreadsheet, Dropbox,
etc. The elements on this site were easy to manipulate. Once
an element was clicked, information for that element would appear on the
right-hand side of the page. Users can adjust things like the width and height
of the element, the information provided in that element, colors, alignment,
background, etc.
Overall, my favorite website to use to create infographics
was Piktogram, just because of its ease of use and its variety of elements that
can be included to represent various forms of information. However, for the
purpose of creating a visually appealing infographic with the information I
had, I chose Infogram. I really liked the clean templates that were not
overwhelming and were easy to manipulate. I feel that any of these websites would be great for introducing students to infographics by giving them an opportunity to explore and create.
Sources:
Malamed, C. (n.d.). EC 010: How to design real (not fake) information graphics. [Podcast.]
Retrieved from http://theelearningcoach.com/podcasts/10/
Perrin, A. (2018, March 8). Nearly one-in-five Americans now
listen to audiobooks. Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/08/nearly-one-in-five-americans-now-listen-to-audiobooks/.
Schulten, K. (2010, August 23). Teaching with infographics:
Places to start. The Learning Network. Retrieved from https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/teaching-with-infographics-places-to-start/?_r=0.
Schulten, K. (2010, August 27). Teaching with infographics:
A student project model. The Learning Network. Retrieved from https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/teaching-with-infographics-a-student-project-model/.
Infogram was also a good website to create infographics. I enjoyed your book consumption infographic. It was a cleaver choice for a library page. :0) Good job on breaking down the three choices so the reader knows what to expect when using the websites.
ReplyDeleteI did like Infogram too. Dragging the options were a nice, easy feature, and I felt it was one of the easier ones to use. I would love to see what our kids would come up with if we let them explore with these infographics. I have found that when I use the infographic to explain information that I have learned in class, it really helps me to understand it better....and it's fun!
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