Infographics

This week we are exploring the world of infomaniacs, I mean Infographics! I felt like an infomaniac when I foolishly decided to open every link (at the same time) that I was given in order to research this topic. That was very silly of me, I became overwhelmed and under motivated! There is so much information available on the topic about how and what to create with infographics! I have included a list of all of the places I visited and read up about this topic – my suggestion to you is - don’t over do it, and maybe read the rest of this blog post – I might just narrow it down for you depending on what type of information you want to present.

The first thing you really should do is decide what you want to share and who are you sharing it with, otherwise you are just afloat on a sea of possibilities with no shore in sight! While this might be fun for a while, it is a real time-waster if you are a busy teacher or librarian (or anyone else who might actually want to live a non-virtual life).

Once you have your focus, consider the following websites that will give you the ability to produce an awesome infographic you can easily share with your audience.

Infogr.am – This is a very clean, streamlined website. For me it was a bit too streamlined. I can imagine that as someone with a spreadsheet full of data needing to be shared in a friendlier format this would be the place for you. They start you on a page where you choose from three icons – Infographic/Report; Chart/Graph; or Map. Of these choices I went with Infographics and at that point was taken to a large choice of themes where the only difference I could discern was a different color scheme on each choice. They all have a large line graph at the top and a place for text at the bottom. I admit I was a bit intimidated by this and stopped there. These were not the types of examples I was expecting – no fun graphics or interesting page shapes or backgrounds.

Easel.ly – This one is a good place to go to get started and if you are interested in upgrading from your free version, it only costs $3 per month and that adds a lot of value to your account. The toolbars are easy to use and there are many free templates available, many made by other users and made public when they are saved at easel.ly. All of their examples are what most of us would think of as an infographic, lots of great graphics and layouts leading the eye here and there across the page. It isn’t difficult to change text and graphics to suit your needs. I created an entire infographic there, but by the time I was finished I had changed so much that it looked very unprofessional. I started again with another template and quickly realized that it was not a great match for the information I was trying to share.

 

Piktochart – I then found myself on Piktochart. Here I found some awesome templates that I didn’t have to pay extra for. They are a lot more pricey than Easel.ly – Piktochart charges either $15 or $29 per month versus $3, although they do offer a 65% discount on that price after you save your first file. I chose a great looking template and got started. To be fair, the process probably went much faster because I had already done a lot of revamping of what I wanted to do with my info while I was on Easel.ly, but that being said the templates on Piktochart have the added benefit of including coaching in every block you build. They give recommendations for what to leave alone and what to change on the template. They even offer suggestions about what type of information to put into each type of block and where the optimum places are to place graphics. It is a template and tutorial all in one convenient place. I created my infographic in less than an hour and was very pleased with the results. This is my top choice of the three for ease of use and finished looks.

Here is my end product. We are having a Literacy Night at my school in a few weeks and we need a graphic to help promote the event on our website. With a few more tweaks this is hopefully what we will be using.

 Click here for a presentation view of this same graphic

 

Another type of infographic I tried was a word cloud - I created this on Tagxedo with the text from the Infographic above - I thought it turned out nicely!:

 

Sources

Bailey, J. (2013). Using Infogr.am to create infographics. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_uV7ii6V0Q

Bramschreiber, T. (2013). Using Easel.ly to create an infographic. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7ouQczeu0o

Easel.ly. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://www.easel.ly/

Education Infographics | Search Results | Daily Infographic. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://www.dailyinfographic.com/category/education-2

Fryrear, A. (n.d.). How to Make Your Infographics Info-Tastic: 4 Key Elements to Successful Infographic Design. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://www.marketergizmo.com/make-infographics-info-tastic-4-key-elements-successful-infographic-design/#InfographicTool

Infogr.am. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://infogr.am/

Infographics- What? Why? How? (2010). Retrieved October 16, 2016, from http://langwitches.org/blog/2010/06/16/infographics-what-why-how/

Krum, R. (2010, April 24). 10 Tips for Designing Infographics. Retrieved October 16, 2016, from https://digitalnewsgathering.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/10-tips-for-designing-infographics/

Malamed, C. (2013, August 31). ELC 010: How To Design Real (Not Fake) Information Graphics [Audio blog post]. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://theelearningcoach.com/podcasts/10/

Ojalvo, H. E. (2010, August 26). Teaching With Infographics | Language Arts, Fine Arts and Entertainment [Web log post]. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/teaching-with-infographics-language-arts-fine-arts-and-entertainment/

Ojalvo, H. E. (2010, August 25). Teaching With Infographics | Science and Health [Web log post]. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/teaching-with-infographics-science-and-health/

Ojalvo, H. E., & Doyne, S. (2010, August 24). Teaching With Infographics | Social Studies, History, Economics [Web log post]. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/teaching-with-infographics-social-studies-history-economics/

Perrin, A. (2016, September 01). Book Reading 2016. Retrieved October 16, 2016, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/01/book-reading-2016/

Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. (2016). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://www.pewinternet.org/

Piktochart. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://magic.piktochart.com/

Schulten, K. (2010, August 27). Teaching With Infographics a Student Project Model [Web log post]. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/teaching-with-infographics-a-student-project-model/

Schulten, K. (2010, August 23). Teaching With Infographics | Places to Start [Web log post]. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/teaching-with-infographics-places-to-start/?_r=2

Smallwood, L. (2012). How to use Piktochart. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbyUbXkc8KE

Tagxedo. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://www.tagxedo.com/
Wright, R. (2013). Easel.ly tutorial. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN-JDeCPca8

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