Maps, Charts, and Infographics

A picture is worth a thousand words, or so the quote goes, but is it really? Can you really breakdown a complex concept into one simple easy to understand picture? The answer is yes. In my Facebook post I talked about memes, but today I want to give you the skinny on infographics. What is an infographic? I'm glad you asked. An infographic is a pictorial representation of information or data. Infographics can take large sums of data that can be hard to understand, especially to those who are not familiar with number crunching, and present it in a way that makes sense. In honor of Banned Book Week, September 21-27, check out this infographic on the most controversial books in America. 

How can you use them in the classroom? Infographics can be used by you the teacher or librarian to convey a concept, or students can use them to show understanding of a concept. There are many good already created infographics that you can use to help demonstrate the point you are trying to create. The Learning Network, a blog run by the New York Times, has some great resources gathered into one place for you to view/use. If you cannot find what you are looking for, then you should try your hand at creating your own infographic. There are free websites that will help you make your own infographics such as Easel.ly, Piktochart, and Infogr.am. I like Easel.ly and Piktochart the best because they seem to have more to options, but all are easy to use. I used Piktochart to create an infographic of a report I read on Teens and Mobile Apps Privacy published on the PEW Internet Research Project. I used a template, and it took me about 45 minutes to create because I got distracted watching Castle reruns on TNT.




As you can see from my snazzy infographic, some teens are taking measures to protect themselves when it comes to the apps they download and what information they choose to share. I find this news comforting because my students do not seem to concerned about what they share on their various social medias. Internet safety training each year gets more and more difficult as there are more and more ways for them to share every minute detail about their lives. The report itself is not long and fairly easy to digest, but an infographic makes the information visual. Since not all people learn by reading, having visual representations will reach those visual learners in your classroom.

If you are looking for a new way to have students demonstrate understanding, then infographics are for you! The three sites I mentioned previously all can be accessed using your Facebook, Google +, or Twitter (Infogr.am only) accounts, so they would not have to use an email address to create an account. The trick will be can they remember their passwords to any of their social media networks as most students do not log out of them (I know I don't, but I do remember my passwords!). Infographics can also be alternatives to PowerPoints or Prezis since some of these sites can do presentations too. For more information on having students create their own infographics, check out this blog post from The Learning Network.

Now it's your turn! Go forth and make infographics of your own. If you do, I'd like for you to post them, or a link to them, in the comments.

Mining PEW Progress: 3/150 pages

Brittany