I admit it, I’m in love with infographics. Ever since a colleague turned me on to Information is Beautiful two years ago and I actually found out what they were called I’ve been incorporating them all over my classroom content. Heck, even a quick review of some of my previous posts on this blog reveals my infatuation.
Part of the appeal in using infographics for my classes is that my teaching partners and I build all our own resource content. We don’t use textbooks, period. Therefore, using infographics (just like other engaging images) has been essential in making course content interesting and accessible to a variety of learners.
Along the way, I’ve picked up some tricks and found some good tools. Although it’s not rocket science my first step in finding infographics is to use Google Image Search. I simply type in the content + infographic and viola! start surfing the results. I’ve also came across some libraries like Love Infographics, Visual.ly, and this awesome page (thanks @lissgriffin) which are helpful as well.
The more I’ve used infographics, the more I’ve started to learn which ones don’t use always work in the classroom. For instance, when I had students in grade eight doing work on Goal Seven of the Millennium Development Goals, I thought this infographic would be great to introduce and explore the concept of biodiversity.
But… it wasn’t. Given the time constraints, level of the students, text size, and information density this infographic proved to be too much (and not enough in the ways I needed it). Since then I’ve started to move towards using infographics have typically clearer focus and visuals that actually help represent the data in an effective way (how numbers are shown matter).
For instance, we are currently starting a new unit in Humanities Nine about humanitarian responses to natural disasters. I asked the students which disaster type, in their opinion, is the most deadly. After we discussed their reasoning, I showed them this simple infographic to clearly highlight the numbers.
The above infographic is effective in its simplicity. It shows the information I needed through the use of clear labels and circles that accurately represent the proportion of real numbers.
As we move further into our lessons on humanitarian aid, I sifted through a plethora of infographics to find this slightly more complex one that I plan on using:
It took me time to select this because I wanted an infographic to show some key information (amount and type of aid) but not overwhelm a grade nine student with data. In the end I selected due to a few key reasons:
- Use of questions to guide the infographic.
- The information presented “flowed” along the lines of questioning (with arrows)
- Proportions of numbers highlighted correctly in a visual way (blue and orange data in circles)
- Condensed big data sets of information, for instance focused only on top five donors and recipients
Also, as I use infographics to build classroom resource material I’m also particularly attentive to the source. While Visual.ly has some great infographics, at times I’m more hesitant to use them. It depends on the content being covered and the context in which I use it.
As I continue to use infographics in my classroom, I see two distinct areas of growth:
- Having students complete source analysis exercises on infographics. Just like I vet the infographics I use, I want my students to do the same.
- Have students create infographics. I’m excited to say that this is currently in the works for this unit.