Mrs. Hrin's Classroom Solutions

Continuing the topic... What does my data want to look like?

In the last post, we looked at what students would do with an article they read. They needed to read and understand the information, analyze what information and terms were important, then categorize and manipulate the information visually. This time I want them to delve deeper into the literature, create online surveys and discussions, collect information, analyze it, synthesize it with the literature and present the information in a way that demonstrates their analysis.

An infographic is a great way to visually show what the information is doing in the mind, allowing the students' understanding of the data and their analysis to be comprehensible to all.

So... make your own infographic!

Using Piktochart (there is a basic FREE version, which is what I used), I made an inforgraphic to demonstrate a quick analysis of The Great Gatsby. The sample makes use of data collected by the students through use of Google Forms, math equations that calculate inflation and spending, and a short analysis of the themes of the novel. I would follow this up with a longer written piece about how each of these elements gives the reader a picture of the time and characters.

Here's the sample from the Great Gatsby.

You'll notice I've given the link to infographic and embedded in the html. You can also download the picture directly to your desktop.

Here are two wonderful lists of other infographic platforms. Do your students use a different platform to create infographics? Let me know!
From TripWire Magazine: 20 Powerful Inforgraphic Design Kits
From TeachThought.com: 46 Tools to Make Infograhics in the Classroom

Get to know your data or story intimately. Ask yourself

“What does my data want to look like?”

Based on info and graphics from velocitypartners.co.uk

1. Anatomy: When do you use it? Any time you want to educate about something with many moving constituent parts, which are not widely or easily understood.

Samples: Anatomy of a perfect website

2. Timeline: When to use it? Whenever change over time is your main point.

Sample: Call of Duty vs Battlefield

3. Maps: When to use it? Whenever you want to communicate proximity, distance and direction between a number of different items, or data points.

Sample: The Creative Process

4. Decision Tree: When do you use it? Decision trees are great for guiding people mentally and visually from an indeterminate starting point to any one of many different end-points.

Sample: Do I have to wake up yet?

5. Scale: When do you use it? Anytime you want to prioritize or rank a number of objects against a criterium that your audience will particularly like. Everything in the universe, no matter how unique, is on a sliding scale – we must just ask ourselves what the scale is.

Sample: The likability of angry birds

Mind Maps:
Here's a great student sample. After reading and discussing a section of their 11th grade English textbook, students were asked to pull out the big ideas and visually demonstrate what was important. These students used Popplet: