Infographics: My new Love!

Dear Infographics,
       Where have you been all my life?!

Thank you once again to Mike, for introducing me to yet another great new idea! I love infographics; such a creative way to display information. It's not that I haven't seen infographics before, because I know I have... mainly on Pinterest (haha..). I think it's just new to me because I never attached this name to the visuals before now. I also never thought about using these kinds of visuals as an educational resource. Now that I have thought about these things and looked at tons of different infographics, they are my newfound love! An infographic can tell tons of information while being interesting and visually appealing. I would take an infographic over a PowerPoint presentation any day!

As I was browsing the internet looking at different infographics to go off of in order to create my own, I came across this website: Infographics Mania:  http://infographicsmania.com/
This website has TONS of infographics on a lot of different topic areas; some informative, some funny, and all are very well done. Here are a couple that I found interesting:

1. http://infographicsmania.com/social-media-in-education/

2. http://infographicsmania.com/green-lifestyle/

I think this would be an excellent idea to use in the classroom. This may be a tricky task to do with early years students, but I think that introducing this idea to middle and senior years students would be great. There are tons of ways to integrate infographics into the classroom, and many purposeful reasons for students to create their own. For example, students could create an infographic as a way to present information that they have learned, say from a research project. This just gives the students another opportunity to showcase their creativity, as well as showcase what they have learned. As a plus, it gives the teacher a way to assess their learning! I think it's a great way to incorporate those different learning styles as well. Many students out there are visual learners, and they need to be reached too! The only trouble I am having is thinking of ways to incorporate these into the early years classroom, because I would love to use them in my class. I know that I can show my students infographics which highlight the topic areas that I am teaching. But how do I help them to create their own? Based on the examples I have seen I think it would be too difficult for them to create these on the computer. Perhaps I could allow them to create one using the old-fashioned option of pen and paper? This way they still have the opportunity to be creative, as well as the option of showing me what they have learned in a different way. Hm.. options to think about! If you have any ideas as to how to use these in the early years classroom, I would love to hear them as well!  

All that being said, I took a stab at creating my own. I am sad to report that I was having a lot of difficulty doing this! It is probably just my poor tech skills coming into play. I tried using infogr.am and visual.ly. Both of them were giving me trouble. Is it just me?! Looks like I am going to have to ask my tech problem solver for help again! Thanks in advance Scott!
                            Infographic yet to come