Even without knowing what the graphic to the left is about you have to appreciate its beauty, simplicity...and when one looks closer...its informative nature.I am, for the first time, stating out loud (or at least in written form) that I have a new addiction....and I am telling myself it is a healthy one.
I love making infographics! (Acknowledgement is the first step)
And the program Piktochart makes it all too easy. Ridiculously easy, in fact.
The latest team assignment in this MALAT program asked us to explore three different journals (all related to learning in some way). We needed to summarize and compare/contrast them. My group did the usual APA formatted paper - the safe bet. It also allows us to get more practice writing in this form.
HOWEVER...
I just couldn't help myself....so while my three group members were doing some extra editing....
I created THIS!
I also did some digging and found some pretty amazing infographics...here are a few:
1. How to have an effect on student achievement
2. Technology in the classroom
3. Learning Theory (this is not the most beautiful of infographics, but very informative)
Digging a little further down the rabbit hole... I came across an article on the Edutopia blog. The author, a grade 9 English teacher in the U.S., discusses his view of student learning in an English context. His original belief of "encouraging students to improve their writing invariably involved encouraging greater depth, adding more detail, crafting more complex sentences" (Edutopia, 2015, para 1). In essence, he believed that in order to write better, students had to write longer.
As students are becoming more technology literate, the education system needs to adapt. Infographics allow for some work and play to come together and encourage student learning in a different way. Infographics allow students to still engage in a topic thoughtfully - even though on the surface it may look simple and very surface level. The skills involved in creating an infographic can include summarizing, synthesizing, organizing, identifying key ideas, paraphrasing... so many relevant skills in an English classroom.
I am definitely going to develop a lesson around the creation of an infographic in the next few weeks. I hope my students will be as excited as I am!
References
Edutopia. (2015, July 24). Inventing infograpics: Visual Literacy Meets Written Content [Blog Post]. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/infographics-visual-literacy-written-content-brett-vogelsinger
Image retrieved from: https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/post/121605726372/good-artists-copy-great-artists-steal-although
I too love infographics! I fully agree that creating an infographic includes the key skills that you have outlined in your post, especially that of synthesizing learning. It is such a fun way to cement student learning and I also plan to include infographics as a part of my fall hybrid course. I used www.easel.ly for the ones I've created so far for the MALAT course but look forward to trying out Piktochart as well.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed your blog post...I can feel your enthusiasm sparking out of the page and am sure your students will get the benefit of that as well. I like what you said about play and learning coming together...it's a very good mix and use of infographics does facilitate that.
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