Creating Infographics

Infographics combine information with images and graphics to present information about a topic in a visually appealing way.

I created the following infographic using Piktochart (www.piktochart.com). This is an example of how an infographic can be used as part of a pre-reading activity for literature, as in this case, to introduce students to background information prior to reading Of Mice And Men or The Grapes of Wrath.

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You can create free infographics at Easelly, Picktochart, or Infogr.am, These services make the infographic creation process simple enough to be accessible for most tech savvy high school students. While teaching students to incorporate images into their project, it can be a good opportunity to reinforce their knowledge of copyrights and encourage them to seek out images licensed under Creative Commons copyright. (Images in my example above were sourced from Wikipedia under a Creative Commons attribution license that allows republication.)

As a lesson and assignment idea, teachers can assign the creation of infographics as an alternative to a traditional report. For example, in a social studies classroom: After researching the 13 original American colonies, students will demonstrate knowledge by creating an infographic combining key dates, statistics, and facts with relevant images, maps, and graphics. Students can then share their infographics with each other on a class website or wiki to expand their learning on a subject.