Infographics- the best kind of graphics


Topic of the blog today are Infographics!

Experience:

I fell in love with Infographics my first year teaching. They are normally high interest topics with engaging graphic representation of information. I love incorporating them into teaching, because it allows for analysis of informational text and graphics while more engaging than most reports or articles.

Picture A: An infographic, I used when teaching high school English I- the infographic was chopped up into pieces and mixed with other infographics and the students had to match them together like puzzles. Evaluating the content and design to match the pieces together.
Picture A

I have created some for classes and used infographics as resources, but I have never asked my students to create them. So today I have been tasked to look at three different web 2.0 applications to create infographics to decide which I like better. The three applications are: Piktochart, Infogram, and Easelly.

Trial:

First off, I created an account with all 3 applications. All three are easily able to be synced with google which is a definite benefit for me. I love having all of my accounts synced together so I don't have to sign in and out of so many applications when working on school and grad school work.

Next, I looked at the "dashboard" page where you can pick out templates or begin creating the infographic. Piktochart looks very vibrant with many different templates to use from infographics, presentations, and printable flyers. Infogram is not as inviting- while it does look like the interface is very easy to use it is not as bright or graphic as many of the other infographs that I have seen. I wasn't sure if this application would meet my needs - to create an interactive or engaging presentation of information. I think this application would be perfect for a professional presentation- but not as evocative as I would want for the engagement of students and colleagues in the education realm. Lastly, Easelly looks like it has many more templates to work with than the other two applications, but when you choose your template to create an infographic - you can tell that the interface is just a little bit more difficult to follow.

Picture B

Critique:

I chose to go with Piktochart, because I was thinking of how I would present this information to students or how to give a tutorial to students in the library to create their own. I think this application was the easiest to follow and create for the newbie.

But if I were working with more seasoned techies and professionals I would probably suggest Easelly. It seems to have more options and customize-able templates for the experiences techie. Since I am still relatively knew to this application - I chose to use Piktochart before I moved on to more advanced applications. A downside I saw was that to be able to download a PDF you need a "PRO" account. PDF's I have found in my experience are important for these types of projects because if you have links on an icon- they will not work in the PNG or JPEG file. This is a problem I saw with many of the applications- but Canva allows you to download as PDF.

Below are two infographics I have made about Social Media.

Picture B: The first to the left is an infographic presentation created along with my 7th grade ELA team to make a research resource for their Argumentative Research Essay that they teach in the spring using the website application Canva. This is not necessarily a traditional infographic- but shows how we can use these applications in the classroom and library to help our students.

Results:

Picture C: The second to the right is the infographic I created based on the Pew Research Center using Piktochart.
Picture C

This chart was relatively easy to make using the Social Media Fact Sheet on Pew Research Center Website. I think that this type of task could easily be used in the classroom for both students and teacher- as presentation and creation.

While I was overall satisfied with the infographic that I was able to create, I wasn't truly happy with the engagement created with the graphics.

Next Time:

 I think that Easelly might end up a more engaging product, but because of ease of use it was not the top choice. The more experience I get with these type of products I think I would migrate more to Easelly.

Resources used for this blog:

Social Media Fact Sheet. (2017, January 12). Retrieved June 15, 2017, from http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/ 



Comments

  1. UnknownJune 23, 2017 at 7:22 PM

    This is great information for infographic newbies. I played around with piktochart 2 years ago to create a syllabus for my advanced world geography. It was very easy to use, but did lack customization. Thanks for the great information!

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJune 24, 2017 at 3:44 PM

    Nice post! It's awesome that you already had experience with these tools. I had never heard of infographics but I think they are a great tool to transform learning. I read an article that commented on the use of graphs, charts, and other visuals on state assessments which is part of informational texts that students have trouble with, so I can definitely see this being a hit at my school. I am going to tell my colleagues about this.
    I also explored Piktograph and thought the opposite of what you did; I think Piktograph would be better for more advanced technology users and is more appropriate for professional use in comparison to Easl.ly which I think would be better for students. I really thought easl.ly was very user-friendly and provided many options for users without having to upgrade for a cost.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownJune 28, 2017 at 7:44 AM

    Thanks for sharing your experience using infographics with your students. It sounds like it has been a very effective instructional tool for you. I really like the idea of having students create their own infographics. This is something I too thought about while I was working on mine for this assignment. What a great way for students to show their understanding of a subject matter! I really liked using Easel.ly to create my infographic. I am new to infographics and found it fairly easy to use after watching the tutorials and playing around with it. Great job!

    Becky Sandner

    ReplyDelete
  4. Heather BotheJune 30, 2017 at 2:11 PM

    What a great activity to introduce your students to infographics with Picture A. I also really like the information contained in that particular infographic since I have a kid in college and another that will be there in 2 years. I appreciate that you said that next time you might use Easel.ly. I guess all products have different features that we all can relate to better than others. I liked Easel.ly better but it seemed that a lot of our classmates had preferred Piktochart.

    ReplyDelete

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