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Asking for new and innovative ways of receiving assessment tasks for students can be a little tricky and with 30 students submitting powerpoint presentations for every assignment, it is easy for students to use the same creative decisions that they continuously make when using animations and transitions. Using new tools such as infographics allows students to create data based posters that are both informative and creative.

What is an infographic?

An infographic is [a visual representation of information or data, e.g. as a chart or diagram]

How to use infographics in the classroom?

• Teachers to present information

• Students to collaborate and present information

• Students to complete as a task (non-assessable and assessable)

When students create infographics, they are using information, visual, and technology literacies. This page includes links to help you develop formative or summative assessments that have students creating infographics to showcase their mastery of knowledge.

Which one do I use?

There are so many infographic websites available, it purely comes down to personal choice. You may want to perhaps consider the templates that each of them provide and determine their relevance to the topic that you are learning in class to ensure that it is simple for your students to adapt into a masterpiece. As a teacher, I personally don’t spend too much on the background design but ask students to spend ample time in collecting their information whilst ensuring its accuracy. The design element should come naturally to them and not dominate the overall activity.

• Piktochart

• Venngage

• Vizualise.me

• Google Developers

• Easel.ly

• Infogr.am

• Visual.ly

• InFoto Free • Dipity

• Get About

• What About Me?

• Many Eyes

• iCharts

• StatSilk

• Photo Stats

Why use an infographic?

The goal of infographics is to help students distill the most important pieces of information from any given text and form a conclusion. A good graphic can fit these standards by reinforcing to students that their conclusions should be grounded in evidence and by challenging their ability to organize their information hierarchically. Infographics can also offer a rare chance for crossover between math and language arts, something that many teachers find difficult to do.

How to ensure validity and accuracy of information presented by students

It is important that students have the skills to validate the accuracy of the information that they are presenting on their infographic. This can be done by showing them good and poor samples of infographics and have the class to critique it together. These skills will enable them to critique their own and encourage them to check their own work. Teachers can also opt for students to work in groups and ask for each group to share the narratives and conclusions they drew from each other’s infographic. This way, they are able to support their conclusions with evidence. This can also prompt a classroom discussion on the differences and similarities between each group’s findings.