Shauna Fisher

Assignment: Visual information, creating an infographic.

Uses in the classroom: The concept of an infograph is useful across the curriculum but I think it would be especially helpful in the science and social studies categories. It got me thinking about the first few weeks of science and how the students are taught to think like a scientist and what that means but then as the year goes on we never really get to go back and visit that aspect of science. So my idea was to create this infographic to present at the beginning of the year (I think it would be a fun poster to have in my room as well) and then leave it accessible so we can revisit the concepts periodically and remember the "hows" and "whys," not just the "whats" of science. 

The middle part of the graphic shows the tools used when doing scientific inquiry. That is pretty self explanatory. The very bottom shows the units typically used and reinforces the concept that these need to be written down. As a former premed student with a TON of college science classes under my belt I know that this is a big thing in college and you can get serious points marked off if you don't label your units. I think it will help to drill that concept into their heads starting early on in school so that's why I thought it was important to put on the graphic. 

Michigan benchmarks covered:

S.IP.03.16 Construct simple charts and graphs from data and observations.

In all honesty I took these benchmarks and made them into my graphic. I was originally intending to do something more specific but I thought this just played into the idea of an infographic really well.

**I also have ideas of the kids making these infographics. I used piktochart which was actually pretty difficult to create and didn't give me a lot of options as far as editing and changing things around. I think using one of the programs would be fine but there would need to be lessons on it beforehand. I think the students could make a decent one in Word without much difficulty, after observing a few examples of what the graphic should look like. I think it would be a great culminating project for just about anything they have to learn about- they could create one that summarizes a book they read, somewhat like a book report; they could make one that showed a math concept like fractions; they could make a timeline about the people they have to learn about in history; they could create one for any science topic like weather or magnets. The options are endless, really.

Issues to consider: With the infographic I made some vocabulary would have to be explained and cleared up. Observation is not a word kids instantly know. It would have to be presented and demonstrated. Other vocabulary words like investigations, experiments, and data collection would have to be explicitly taught as well. But they are all concepts that need to be taught regardless and this is a good way to introduce the concepts.

If the kids are making them, again there would need to be a tutorial or two or three on the programs used. Partners might be helpful or parent volunteers to help the students make their graphics. Planning time would be needed- I drew mine out first and wrote down the words I wanted to use- the students would benefit from time spent on planning out what they want their graphic to look like.

Copyright: Used the piktochart.com website to create the graphic; clip art used under creative commons and fair use from two sites http://iconbug.com/  and http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart.