Infographics are not only full of interesting thinking, but they are pleasing to the eye. There's something about being able to think through a topic graphically. Looking at an infographic I've always thought they must be easy to make, but I have found considering your content and message for an infographic to me more challenging than I had anticipated.
Yesterday, I decided to give creating an infographic a try for my post, Teacher as Personal Trainer. I used Piktochart for yesterday's infographic. Templates were limited unless you are willing to pay $29 per month which I consider to be far out of my price range. I found creating on the site to be a bit time consuming, but manageable. There were many options for sharing the final product.
Today I thought I would try Venngage. While this site was much easier to use, I found embedding the final infographic to be more of a challenge. In Piktochart the embed code could be adjusted before copying it. Piktochart automatically adjusted ratios for effective presentation. Today's infographic about DigiLitSunday wasn't as easy to adjust to embed into my blog. You cannot see the entire infographic here, but instead will have to click this link.
I'm thinking infographics could be useful as an option for sharing thinking digitally. Though infographics aren't new, I'm in the beginning stages of exploring their possibilities for students. I'm wondering what you have tried. Favorite creation apps for infographics? Infographics you like to use as mentor texts? How have they worked in your classroom?
Infographic Resources
Cool Infographics (mentor text)
Daily Infographic (mentor text)
Kids Discover: Infographics (mentor text)
Now I See: Collection of Infographic Resources (information)
Cybraryman: Infographics (information)
The Guardian: Infographics What Children Can Learn from Data (information and mentor text)
This is wonderful! Thanks for taking the time to explore different infographic sites and for using DigiLit Sunday as your guinea pig. I used Piktochart with my students and the learning curve was high. I found that they needed to prepare with a lot of research before starting. I made the mistake of starting with the site. They ended up doing copy and paste which isn't real learning. I haven't tried again, but I should. Thanks for this great list of resources.
ReplyDeleteThank you for all these resources! Very cool! I haven't tried much in terms of infographics. We did an online presentation about fear/courage with my 5th graders, and one of their options was to find an infographic. They found some really great ones. I also thought about giving kids an option to make an infographic as a response to an independent book.
ReplyDeleteThis is something I've been considering a lot lately. I bought the book Smarter Charts because I know picture charts are more helpful for the way our brains work. I'm going to investigate this as well and watch what you do. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI can always count on you for a few hours, weeks, no months of something to #playtolearn about!
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the time you spent playing, learning AND sharing with us!
~Deb
Here's another resource you might like...just ran into it today...cleaning out my Feedly has been very profitable!
ReplyDeletehttp://learninginhand.com/blog/2015/1/6/producing-infopics