I am amazed by all the different types of resources out
there in creating infographics. Not only that, but the majority of them are
FREE. I am a person that loves having a visual representation of any sort of
information, whether it deals with numbers (data), knowledge, timelines…anything!
As youngsters, we all start learning by picture books. When I read a book
nowadays, (no there are not pictures)...haha...I take the words and create a
picture in my head to help tell the story. We learn visually, remember things visually. You may not
remember someone’s name, but you remember their face. You may not remember the
name of the street but you remember landmarks on the street. I think you get
where I am going.
When it comes to
higher education (middle school and above) you start to see less pictures. Kids start to become less interested because
they feel bombarded with the words. Why can’t we still have all the text but
have lots of pictures throughout and infographics to help explain the information?
If I were to read a case study and read its results, it is a lot easier for me
to look at the results through some type of visualization, graphs, bulleted
items, charts, etc. I think most people are visual learners or have some
combination of it.
The three resources that I explored through this lab
were: Glogster, Piktochart and
Tagxedo. I spent a good time playing on
all of them and floating back and forth and deciding which one I wanted to use
to create my infographic. I ended up falling in love with Glogster.
Reason being, Glogster is like making an electronic collage, every girl likes
making collages! Haha…
Anyways, Glogster allows you to not only use photos on your
collage, but text, videos and music! How cool is that! It’s a 21st
century collage! It was free, user-friendly
and in all honesty I really enjoyed this lab. When creating my Glogster aka “Glog”, I
thought of how I could use this in my Algebra class. I came across many ways I
could use this in my class: A timeline
of a famous mathematician or the mathematics world/inventions, showing steps to
solve certain problems/theorems, comparing things, showing data, etc.
I chose my glog to be an informational piece. I put a collage together of the famous mathematician,
Blaise Pascal. Instead of reading a 5
page paper about a famous mathematician, students could create a Glog providing
pictures, a brief summary of their contributions to the math world, pictures
and videos. Please check it out here.
Piktochart is very similar to Glogster a
resource that allows you to create visual stories to engage your audience and
provide visualization. However, with Piktochart I was limited to what
layouts I could use because I was using the free version. In addition, you couldn’t have videos and
music clips on your infographic. However,
it is still a great tool and one that I will most definitely use in the future.
Especially if it is something I would want to print out and provide copies to my
students.
Tagxedo turns famous
speeches, news articles, slogans, themes, any words you want into a visually,
interesting looking “word cloud.” - tagxedo.com
Using Tagxedo was a lot of fun. I had seen word clouds before and always
wanted to know how to do it, now I do! Tagxedo allowed me to choose the type of
color of my wording as well as the shape of cloud, the theme, the font, the overall layout. Tagxedo was able to tag other
words that corresponded to my topic of the famous mathematician, Blaise
Pascal. Please see my word cloud of
Pascal below:
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| Words that relate to Blaise Pascal... |
Due to it being this time of year (Valentine's Day) and loving Algebra, I created an Algebra word cloud shaped as a heart. haha!
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| I love Algebra! :) |
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