Infograhics-5391

In Wikipedia infograhics are defined as "visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly." These visual representations are very important to the 21st century learner, in an article found in the New York Times Teaching with infographics/a student project model it talks about the importance of infograhics in the life of students.  This article says "we know how important it is for students to be able to read and interpret visual representations of information." With this being said, as librarians it is very important to be able to use this tool to present information and have students exposed to infograhics daily.  Can you imagine the difference this would make in our students' learning when we present information to them through visual representations or have them create their own infographic? Not only would this make a difference in the students' learning, but also would be an effective way to present data and information to teachers and administrators quickly and easily. 

     For my infographic depiction I chose Pew Research Center's article titled Most Americans-especially Millennials say libraries can help them find reliable, trustworthy information.  I used the data from this article to create my infographic, this data compares Millennials (18-35) to Generation X (36-51), Baby Boomers (52-70), and Silents (71-88).  It shows how much more Millennials trust the libraries for information, to learn new things, and to get information that help with decisions they have to make.

The following is the link to my infographic created:
 https://infogram.com/step-by-step-charts-1gx3pw0ornz02gr

    I began with Easelly, this web app did not catch my eye when I went into their website.  The template/samples available seemed too busy, it had too many graphics and images.  I did want to experience what it was it like to create and infographic on Easelly and I actually found it very user friendly.  It has many tools to help and from the template chosen it is very easy to change the text and add your own, I experienced the same thing with pictures and changing the background.  The negative I found on Easelly is that even though it is a free app when I tried to select certain graphics a pop-up screen appears to upgrade to a premium account for a fee. 
     I went on to explore PiktoChart and I found it great, it is also very user-friendly and had many templates available to use.  As I explored the different features and found it very easy to use and the best is there are templates ready to use, just needed to change images and enter my information. While PiktoChart allowed me to create my own template and Easelly did not, creating an infograhic through PiktoChart was overall quick and easy.  The negative I found was it did not seem very professional if using this to share information with teachers and administrators.
     Infogram was the web app I used to fully create an infographic.  As I began to explore it and began creating my infographic I did find it a little difficult to use, but I was determined to use it because I really liked the chart available to represent my data.  Once I continued to use it and "played" with it I created a great infographic with bar graphs to depict my information.

     Overall I found all three web apps user-friendly and being able to explore these web apps was a great experience.  I found that as a librarian having students create an infograhic would be great experience for them and I would have them use PiktoChart because it is quick and easy to use.  As a librarian presenting information to teachers and administrators I would use Easelly since it is a little easier to use and navigate, would not be as time consuming to create my infograhic.

Sources:

Easelly [Web application]. Seattle, WA. Retrieved from https://www.easel.ly/

Infogram (Infogram software) [Web application]. San Francisco, CA. Retrieved from https://infogram.com/

Piktochart [Web application]. Penang, Malaysia. Retrieved from https://piktochart.com/

Schulten, K. (2010). Teaching with infographics: A student project model. The Learning Network. Retrieved from https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/teaching-with-infographics-a-student-project-model/

Geiger, A. (2017). Most Americans-especially Millennials-say libraries can help them find reliable, trustworthy information. Pew  Research Center: Internet, Science, & Tech., Retrieved from: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/30/most-americans-especially-millennials-say-libraries-can-help-them-find-reliable-trustworthy-information/

Infograhic. (n.d). In Wikipedia.Retrieved October 20, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infographic