“How can infographics be used in your classroom?”
After looking at the different resources and examples of infographics, I absolutely see the applications for both middle and high school students. It is a creative assessment tool that allows students to present large amounts of information in a visual way. Many of the examples I saw were quite complex so I would be interested to see examples created by younger students. Based on my own experience with learning how to navigate piktochart, I would say that this would be very difficult to teach my 4th/5th grade students how to use. These sites that I researched seemed very time consuming to master and I don’t see these specific tools as the best use of my ELA 90 minute daily block. I do however think that the mind mapping tool “Popplet” that my students learned how to use earlier in the year could definitely be used to create an interesting infographic. Students used this tool to write a concise phrase and then search for an image that they and their partner believed was the best representation. Now that I know about Creative Commons, I would definitely use that as an opportunity to show students how to choose images that are publicly shared. After they created their visual with limited text, students projected their Popplets on the whiteboard and used it as the foundation for their oral presentations. I was extremely impressed by their oral presentations because they referred to their visuals, but they didn’t have a full speech/text in front of them which allowed them to really focus on maintaining eye contact, using public speaking voice, etc. I had them orally present with partners so they were able to elaborate and build on each others ideas. During their rehearsal time I noticed that many pairs were simply describing the image they picked and basically “reading” the image. Once I asked them to explain why they chose that image, their explanations became much more profound and interesting.
2 Comments
I agree with you that Piktochart would be a bit much for younger students to use. I haven't tried poplet though. Is it much different?
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Kris Drew
11/9/2016 07:01:55 pm
I really appreciate how you connect to your practice here. We get to experience and explore many new technologies and then find what may work in our classroom. So many tools out there! I appreciate your insightful questions to the students- helping them to bring out what they do know- great!
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Dana HandI teach Read 180 at Northwood Elementary School and I am passionate about reading (obviously!) In my "free time" I love hanging out with my 2 teenagers and taking our two dogs for long walks. Archives
March 2017
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