What are infographics and Why should a teacher care ?

Infographics are a fabulous fusion of information and graphics. They are typically pleasing to the eye, as opposed to a graph that is a more sterile representation of data. Infographics can be found in many places. A prime example and a personal favorite is published as USA Today Snapshots. While the interpretation of infographics is a bit more intuitive than a graph, students often need a bit of assistance in how to read these visuals.

How to Get Started

  1. Teacher furnished infographics can help students get used to these unique visuals. See the Easel.ly blog for some ideas for your classroom.
  2. Introduce some of the USA Today Snapshots or other samples to your classroom activities. Try using them as exit tickets, in a Socrative quiz, or add them to a quest or scavenger hunt to encourage curiosity.
  3. Have students create their own infographics to help others understand their data, writing or to make a quick and effective impact on their readers. Try some of the following free tools for simple infographic creation:

 Key Aspects for an Effective Infographic

  • Purpose – there must be a point to all of the work you are going to be doing; if it is not clear to you then it will not be clear to others so will not have the impact you hope for
  • Research, research, research – the data is the basis for the entire infographic so make sure it is reliable and cited
  • Pre-plan – once you have the data you will need to determine the best way to promote it to make the greatest impact

 

Continue to explore more tips in the well-made infographic below from Socially Sorted.

7 Superpowers of a Knockout Infographic

In search of more? Tap into some of our specialized Eduspire courses: Guiding Students in Gathering and Visualizing Data and Helping Students Create Powerful Presentations