Infographics - Instant Graphic Designing

 templates from easel.ly

For this weeks assignment, for my Power Tools for Educators class, I was to design my first inforgraphic.  I had never heard of an infographic before, but I always fancied myself as an armchair graphic designer.  So when I surfed through some different infographic sites on the web, I was fascinated.  Who knew that the tools were so simple to make one's own professional graphic?  Some of the sites were easier to use than others, and some sites definitely had better templates to choose from, but overall infographic sites make creating professional infographics easy.  Infographics bring graphic design to the masses.  All you need is a computer and something to say. 

That being said, as easy as infographics are to make, with such sites as easel.ly and visual.ly, they still take time.  And time is in short supply for me these days, as my M.A.T. courses this summer are moving swiftly along and are jammed packed with lots of things to learn.  I didn't have enough time to spend on creating my infographic as I would have liked.  Some of the features of the programs I used were a little difficult for me, such as the text boxes.  I wanted to put lots of information in them, which I discovered defeats the whole purpose of an infographic - "a quick visual to represent an idea".  But once I learned to chose just the big ideas, I started to get the hang of using the infographic programs.  And then I was hooked.  I wanted to make more and more....

 My first attempt at an infographic.

Now where would I use infographics as a teacher?  The following are some ways that come to mind to use in the classroom: to create a visual for summarizing a procedure, outlining a method, listing a like set of information, comparing or contrasting ideas, visualizing data, charting or graphing science observations, recap of learning, illustrating timelines, or stating classroom rules. 

I can think of lots of great ways to use infographics, but because I'm still such a newbie at this tool, I'm not sure how often I'd be able to take the time to design a infographic for some of the ways I mentioned in the classroom.  With all of these new technology tools that we have be learning and testing in this course, from voicethreads to infographics, I realize my proficiency in these tools may inhibit my ability to use them as often and as effectively in the classroom as I would like.  My head is swimming with all of the ways that technology can be used in the classroom.  It's all very exciting and frankly, often lots of fun, but the basics of making sure you are planning, teaching, and assessing each child has to come first, and as a new teacher the basics will probably be overwhelming.  Will I be able to weave in the latest technology tools as a new teacher?

 I found this infographic example from visual.ly thought provoking.  I'm very interested in how children do in school in relation to how old they are when they begin school (in years and months).

Another example from visual.ly of an infographic on MOOC, a topic we discussed from Curtis Bonk's book, The World is Open,  in our M.A.T. class, Power Tools for Educators.

An example from visual.ly that teachers may use on writing in the classroom.