Throughout the last two weeks, I was assigned the task to create an infograph. Prior to completing the infograph I wanted to make sure I had a clear understanding of what an infograph was and the different online tools that were available to create one. I quickly realized that an infograph was a visually appealing way to display information in a condensed form. It is designed to be easy for a reader to understand and gather as much information on a topic that will fit on the infograph.
My first task was to figure out what topic I wanted to use for my infograph. After trying to decide between two topics with a little help from my course instructor, I decided on looking how much time youth spend with media and what is actually recommended by specialist as to the "healthy" amount of time a child should spend. This topic is very near and dear to my heart since my three year old has fallen in love with Disney Junior and wants to eat, sleep, and breathe Mickey Mouse Clubhouse if I would allow it. Of course as a parent who has done a little research on the topic already, I know what is recommended for his age group. It is the age group of my students that I was most interested in gathering data for since I already see them attached to their devices in school, I wondered what the research would say about the topic.
Finding the sources was pretty straight forward, since there was a good amount of data already collected on the issue. The hardest part of the assignment was working with the sites to create the infograph. Initially I did not want to use Glogster since I had used it in the past for other assignments and I wanted to learn something new. I experimented with two sites at first, infogr.am and piktochart. Both sites offered free templates to use to create the infograph. I actually found both sites a bit confusing to figure out the font sizes and positioning of the text. In addition, I was not fond of the backgrounds and templates that they offered for my topic. I decided to use my old reliable Glogster program to create my infograph.
The only downfall of using Glogster was that it limited the amount of information that I could display on the page. Since I had to include at least 6 accurate facts, I wanted to incorporate facts that would provide a decent amount of information for the viewer. In addition I wanted to make sure I was using at least 3 different sources for the information. This part was actually a little more difficult because the CommonSenseMedia website had completed a good number of research on the topic and I tried hard not to use their source multiple times. I also wanted to make sure the layout of the information was easy for readers to see and understand. I felt that a video was a good addition to the infograph because it provided more information that an user could gather by viewing the video and not just looking at a graph or statistic.
I enjoyed working with Glogster and creating my infograph. I hope to incorporate infographs into a lesson or two in the near future for my students. The creating part of the process would not only allow students to express themselves creatively with their product, but they will also be able to complete research on a topic as well.
The following link will take you to my final infograph on Children's Media Use: Glogster: Children Media Use
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