Visualization Tools

I have, in the past, used infographics and even signed up for visual.ly, but it was not until today that I attempted to make my first infographic. The timing is good as my class begins look at biodiversity and the impact of the human population. I tried several online infograph creators; visual.ly, infogr.am, and easel.ly.

 I spent a lot of time on both infogr.am and visual.ly. I found infogr.am easy to use until my uploaded pictures were blocked because of possible copyright infringement. The program gave me directions on how to show the pictures but  I was not able to make it work.

Visual.ly on the otherhand was very easy to use when applying one of their templates, but not friendly to create my own. Perhaps I missed some directions. Anyhow I did create the infograph to the right which illustrates our Twitter use in class. I plan to use this tool from Viusal.ly periodically to inspire students to utilize Twitter and to celebrate those students who go the extra mile.

Of the three tools I tried I found Easel.ly to be the friendliest for creating infographs from scratch. Using two images from google (both given credit on the infograpgh) as my anchors I then applied the objects and text tools to create meaning. Using the human object and grass object, I was able to add meaning to the original biomes map. The "new" image now shows biomes, relative human population, and relative biodiversity.

With a thinking cloud image I was able to add color/contrast and ask the viewer a question; "So what?".

I believe with minimal text I was able to show students where biodiversity exist and provide a prediction of what our impact may be on biodiversity. A deeper look may reveal that humans need the biodivesity and vice versa, this biological interdependence is another key concept for students to understand.

Here is my info graph on Biodiversity and the Impact of the Human Population:

easel.ly