Infographics

 
Here you will find resources for teaching with Infographics in your classroom. We will explore what an infographic is, ways to use them in your teaching, and how to get your students started with making their own infographics. You will find everything that you used in class as well as additional resources for you and your students!
If you find broken links or videos that don't work - please let me know and I'll set it right!

My Presentation:

2014-10-03_2008

What are Infographics?

An infographic is a visual representation of data. They are clever, compelling, timely, and relevant ways to illustrate sets of data.
TEDTalk - David McCandless: The Beauty of data visualization -  A MUST WATCH
A recorded webinar on infographics and how to use them in the classroom
 
Check out this Periodic Table of Visualization Methods (yes...it's an infographic!)

Why are they so popular?

From this marketing infographic (CLICK HERE)
  • They are informative! A good infographic should express a topic in a new way, come to a different conclusion, or take a position on an idea. If put together with great research, solid design, and excellent editing, you can create a paradigm shifting experience for the reader.
  • They make learning fun ! Consuming information visually can make learning fun. If executed well, the graphic can help with spacial-temporal reasoning. You get maximum proficiency with minimal effort.
  • They are universal! You can create an infographic about any topic or for any idea.

Why use them?

  • to communicate a message
  • to present large amounts of information in a compact and easy to understand way
  • to reveal the data discover cause-effect relationships, and identify relationships among data, to make connections
  • to monitor changes or discover trends in data

Types of Infographics

  • Statistics - A "State Of" for your topic - shows where it stands and how it's affecting the world
  • Resource - How-To's, Bulletin Board type guide to a topic
  • Comparative - Compares items
  • Evolutionary - shows the progress or evolution of your topic
  • Informative - Use your infographic to teach or explain a concept
  • Persuasive - Create an infographic to sway opinion (be sure to label it as such as normally one tries to avoid bias in an infographic)
  • Narrative - Tell a story or describe a process (map out a novel or a science experiment)
  • Heirarchy - The Family Tree of your topic (good for character maps, historical figures, showing rank, importance, or connection between items based on data)

More Examples of Infographics (Different from presentation)

Using Infographics in the Classroom

Where to get them

NOTE: Not all of the content of the infographics on these sites is appropriate for school. Be careful where you send your students.

As an Assessment

Creating Infographics

Where to Get Data

  • Google Public Data - Search or upload your own data sets
  • Pew Research Center
  • Semantifi - A search engine for data sets
  • Many Eyes - Data sets and a visualization creator (you can upload your own data too)
  • StatPlanet 
  • Information is Beautiful (swear word on page - but you can get the Google Doc of their data)
  • DataMarket – Find and understand data.
  • The Data Hub – The easy way to get, use and share data.
  • Knoema – Your personal knowledge highway.
  • WorldMap – Explore, visualize and publish geographic information.
  • Get the Data – Ask and answer data questions.
  • Influence Explorer – Provides overviews of political influence data for politicians.
  • US Census Bureau – Measures America (people, places, economy).
  • datacatalogs.org – A comprehensive list of open data catalogs.
  • Freebase – An entity graph of people, places and things from Google.
  • World Bank Data – The world at a glance (key development indicators).
  • Data360 – Telling compelling and data-driven stories.
  • Number Of – You ask, they count.
  • Gallup – Public opinion polls.
  • EveryBlock – Uncovers info on large cities contained in government databases.
  • Daytum – Helps you collect, organize and communicate your everyday data.
  • Google Public Data – Filter and animate data sets from around the world.
  • Gapminder – Displays time series of development statistics for all countries.
  • Munterbund – Graphical visualization of text similarities in essays.
  • World Data Atlas - This is a Chrome App that gives data for every country right in your browser.

Cite That Data

Choosing the Right Type Of Infographic

The type of infographic you create should be determined by your purpose and your data! Go back up HERE and look at the different types of infographics!

Building Your Infographic

THE 5 KEY COMPONENTS TO A GOOD INFOGRAPHIC - quick reminder of what to think about as you plan!

The Tools

  • The Noun Project - The BEST Collection of Graphic Icons...Infographic Heaven
  • Piktochart - Make infographics (has free account with limited templates)
  • Easel.ly - Another online infographic generator - easy to use
  • Infogr.am - Another online infographic site
  • Venngage - The infographic side of this site is free
  • Creately - Good site for diagrams, flow charts, etc.
  • iCharts - Create and share charts
  • Image Chart by Google - Super easy to make wonderful charts and graphs to include in your infographic!
  • Tagxedo - Need a word cloud for your infographic? This one lets you make them in shapes.
  • Wordle - Basic word cloud maker for your infographic
  • Visual.ly - A great place to find and share your own infographics...this site will auto-create infographics from your social media feeds - good site
  • Hohli - built charts, tables, and graphs to use in your infographic
  • Betterworldflux.com
  • Many Eyes - Data sets and a visualization creator (you can upload your own data too)
  • Canva - Super easy with templates! Learn about design in the Design School - and check out their tutorials!

Ideas and Resources for Making Great Infographics

   
 

Even More Resources

  • How to Create Infographics Part 1- An outstanding explanation of what an infographic is and an example of how to create one in Easil.ly (originally created for a college course infographic assignment requirement).
  • How to Create Infographics Part 2 - The continuation of the above lesson - this shows how to insert your creation into Word, Prezi, etc.
 
 
 

 Beyond Static Images

Video:

Resources:

Interactive Data

Infographic Yourself!

  • Biogrify – Create a fun visual snapshot of your life.
  • Vizify TweetSheet – Your Twitter activity as an instant infographic.
  • Photo Stats – App for creating iPhone infographics out of your photo data.
  • Re.vu – A visual resume tool.
  • Vizualize.me – Visualize your resume in one click.
  • Kinzaa – Build your infographic resume.
  • Visual.ly - A great place to find and share your own infographics...this site will auto-create infographics from your social media feeds - good site

Lesson Plans

Templates

The preview of each PPT template may look the same when you view them online, but when you download them and open them in PPT - they are all different.

Infographic Submission Link

You will create your own 27 Things graphic! Check out these EXAMPLES.
Use this link to submit the infographics you will create in class!

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