Infographics: the artsy side of information
04:25
Students usually enjoy reading from infographics because of how it is tastefully structured. Infographics summarise the main information briefly with accompanying pictures or icons that make it easier for readers to follow. As teachers, we can use infographics as a warmer activity to activate our learners' background knowledge by having them respond to the information presented. For classroom management, how about using infographics to lay out the course materials or syllabus and rules as a guideline for the rest of the year? As a production activity, you can have students create their own infographics based on a research topic they're interested in. For example, they could research their family heritage and create an infographic family tree, or you could get them to do a survey and present their results through charts on the infographic. The possibilities are basically limitless if you can find ways for infographics to relate to your learning goals. Out of all the infographic-generating tools available, I was instantly attracted to Piktochart when I read one of the Spanish teachers' post featured in the site blog.
Benefits of using Piktochart
Piktochart is quite convenient for a first-timer because:- It offers a limited number of templates for free (the fancy ones you'd need to access with a premium account). In comparison to Canva, which offers more free templates, Piktochart might seem less preferable, but having tried one of the templates, I find it pretty straightforward and easy to modify. Sometimes having too many choices is confusing.
- You can import your spreadsheet tables into charts. This feature is not available in Canva, which is an added bonus. The chart types are also varied and attractive.
- You can add maps and edit it to suit your data. I reckon this would be very useful if you'd like to highlight only some parts of a certain country relevant to your information.
- You can present your infographic through Present mode, just like the regular powerpoint presentations.
- You can make link websites to the contents of your infographic making it more interactive and informative.
Drawbacks
- You need the premium account (Level Up) to be able to download your infographic in PDF form. For the free account, you can have it as a PNG or JPEG.
- The photos cannot be cropped into another shape (e.g. a changing a square photo into a circle), which might limit your creative inspirations for design.
- The registration process is a little troublesome. When my students tried to sign up, they were redirected to the teacher's log in (or perhaps we might have missed something here).
- There is a limit to how much storage you use for picture uploads. There are downsides when you want to clear up the storage space. If you delete an image you've uploaded, it will be erased even in your past infographics where the image was used. There will be a broken link sign in place of the deleted image.
- Although I find Piktochart quite user-friendly, most of my students had trouble navigating around it. The visual learners or those in tuned with arts find it refreshing, but this tool is not for everyone.
Here is an infographic I made on how to become a digitally literate teacher using the free version from Piktochart.
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