Learning Visually Resources

Infographics work in the classroom because they grab students and allow an entry point to learning — and because they sum up pages and pages, even chapters, of information that would take a reader hours to process. Interactive infographics make kids want to immediately start clicking around to see what’s what. For a teacher who prioritizes an inquiry-driven classroom, that’s a great starting point. Infographics and Data visualization are not just for consumption though, teachers and students can also challenge the learning process by creating original graphics for themselves.

Consumption:

Consuming the information is one portion of the equation when discussing data visualization. Sometimes you look at a piece and think, what the heck is that supposed to be telling me!

There are elements of design to evaluate as well as functionality/clarity of purpose. Suggestions for places to go to begin consuming infographics and data visualization -

... classroom examples of consumption graphics

Places for Interactive Consumption: The previous list of sites takes you into the world of investigation of blogs and discussion of topics that are static (pretty much). There is a hybridized space between consumption and production where the individual interacts and manipulates the data. This is often where one can lose a day or two to mucking around. At least that is what happened to me when I first came across Gapminder. Dang. Here are some more examples of sites that not only visualize, but allow manipulation as well.

... classroom examples of interactive consumption graphics

Evaluation/Creation: Looking at data visualizations and infographics are fun. Creating them is difficult. I suggest a healthy bit of evaluation of a variety of infographics before attempting to make them. There is often a sense of 'where do I start'

Tools for creation...

Data to play with...

- 2008 Voter Turnout - screencast of how I used the data

Storytelling tools - Digital