Week 5 - InfoGraphics

Uses in the Classroom
Info graphics are fun, hip, trendy and seem to be taking the internet by storm. It’s a logical continuation of the Google approach to mass information dissemination and allows our students to quickly and easily assimilate large amounts of information without a lot of sifting through complex reading, or enormous statistics databases. They function as effective reminders and can be used to help facilitate learning goals by reminding students about the important points of each topic or lesson. Teachers can use info graphics to relay important information on a visual level, which can really help students with learning disabilities conceptualize information easier. Many students in today’s classrooms struggle with literacy, and understanding new information can be challenging. Info graphics can help students with literacy problems understand the concepts of a course like history or math easily and visually insuring they don’t fall further and further behind because of difficulty reading.
Info graphics give us a really great way to help our students understand visual information and can be useful by teachers. However, I think having students create their own info graphics and present them to the class can be an equally effective teaching tool. Students can use traditional methods of gathering information to research topics, but present them to the classroom in a fun new way. There’s no need to force students to sit through ANOTHER 30 PowerPoint presentations when all they need to do is focus on creating a visually appealing and fun info graphic to explain their topic…group projects may never be the same.


Issues to Consider
Like all research, info graphics are only as useful as the content that goes into them. If the research is gathered from less than creditable sources then the info graphic itself becomes meaningless. This is an awesome learning experience for teachers to show their classes the importance of good research though. Because of the small compressed “cut to the chase” focus in info graphics teachers can ask questions like “where did you get that statistic” or “1 in 10 seems a little high, how did you find that information?” and correct student behavior quickly and to the point. How many times have we all entered into a rubric that sources used were less than creditable? I have many times, however that doesn’t mean anything to the student because they can’t relate that back to their work here and now. If we’re not careful about how we and our students gather information when working with info graphics we could be encouraging bad research habits and incorrect information.

Copyright / References:

·         United States Department of Justice, Internet Crime Reporting Center. (2012). Ic3 internet crime center - 2013 anual report. Retrieved from website: http://www.ic3.gov/media/annualreport/2012_IC3Report.pdf

·         Hackmageddon. (n.d.). 2012 cyber attacks statistics. Retrieved from http://hackmageddon.com/2012-cyber-attacks-statistics-master-index/

·         All images sourced in this document were provided by Piktochart v3 (http://www/piktochart.com)