Hello and welcome back, School Media Specialist! On today's episode of Live, Love, Library we will be discussing a very important tool available to us called... Infographics! This useful little device can be used to represent information or data in a visually appealing and organized way. Now there are several websites that can help you make said infographic. I'm going to highlight three of these websites to give you a good place to start. Click on the links and check them out yourself. Decide what format is best for you!
First, I'm going to talk about Easel.ly. This site offers many templates as well as an option to start from scratch. For those of you that are not to familiar with the basics of design, choosing a ready made template may be the right option for you. For the more advanced creator, the Start Fresh button will take you to a blank document that you can fill with objects, media, backgrounds, charts, texts, etc. Another great feature of Easel.ly, is that soon after you sign up, they will send you an email "Cheat Sheet" filled with free resources that will help you in creating your first infographic. Easel.ly is very user friendly and has a clean and organized interface that most people will love. As with most free sites, you are limited to what you can do for free. If you really love it and want to go Pro, you can get many more templates, images, fonts, and much more for $3 a month.
The next website I want to feature is Piktochart. This site and I are old friends. I have used Piktochart often in my classroom for various things including invitations, permission slips, posters, and of course, infographics! Piktochart also offers many templates in various formats such as infographic, presentation, poster and report. With Piktochart you can also Create Your Own Piktochart in any format. Piktochart is user friendly and easy to use. Of the three, it offers the most features for free. You can also Level Up to a paying account for $15-$29 a month for extra services such as, more templates, fonts, removing watermarks, converting to PDF and many more.
The last website I want to introduce to you is Infogr.am. Infogr.am has a Learn section that contains tutorials for anything you might need help with. Watch them! Infogr.am is a much more powerful infographic creator and a smidge less user friendly. Those of you that are decent with technology will like this one and will appreciate what you can do with this website. Newcomers to the site will do fine as well with a little time spent watching the videos or just tinkering with the program itself. The free stuff is limited as with the others, but the website also offers three levels of upgrades depending on your needs ranging from $19-$67 a month.
Personally, I prefer Piktograph more than the other two I discussed. However, I decided to use Easel.ly to create my infographic for this post just because I like trying new things, and I felt particularly adventurous today. I visited the Pew Research Center to find some data that I could use for my example. I picked an article on Book Reading and the research on ebooks vs. traditional books written by Andrew Perrin.
Perrin, A. (2016, September 01). Book Reading 2016. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/01/book-reading-2016/
I hope you have learned a little something today and are more prepared to try creating some of your own infographics. If anything, it will be a new and exciting way to present information to your kiddoes. Remember that all of these programs have a learning curve so please be patient and endure. It will be worth the time investment. Trust me!
First, I'm going to talk about Easel.ly. This site offers many templates as well as an option to start from scratch. For those of you that are not to familiar with the basics of design, choosing a ready made template may be the right option for you. For the more advanced creator, the Start Fresh button will take you to a blank document that you can fill with objects, media, backgrounds, charts, texts, etc. Another great feature of Easel.ly, is that soon after you sign up, they will send you an email "Cheat Sheet" filled with free resources that will help you in creating your first infographic. Easel.ly is very user friendly and has a clean and organized interface that most people will love. As with most free sites, you are limited to what you can do for free. If you really love it and want to go Pro, you can get many more templates, images, fonts, and much more for $3 a month.
The next website I want to feature is Piktochart. This site and I are old friends. I have used Piktochart often in my classroom for various things including invitations, permission slips, posters, and of course, infographics! Piktochart also offers many templates in various formats such as infographic, presentation, poster and report. With Piktochart you can also Create Your Own Piktochart in any format. Piktochart is user friendly and easy to use. Of the three, it offers the most features for free. You can also Level Up to a paying account for $15-$29 a month for extra services such as, more templates, fonts, removing watermarks, converting to PDF and many more.
The last website I want to introduce to you is Infogr.am. Infogr.am has a Learn section that contains tutorials for anything you might need help with. Watch them! Infogr.am is a much more powerful infographic creator and a smidge less user friendly. Those of you that are decent with technology will like this one and will appreciate what you can do with this website. Newcomers to the site will do fine as well with a little time spent watching the videos or just tinkering with the program itself. The free stuff is limited as with the others, but the website also offers three levels of upgrades depending on your needs ranging from $19-$67 a month.
Personally, I prefer Piktograph more than the other two I discussed. However, I decided to use Easel.ly to create my infographic for this post just because I like trying new things, and I felt particularly adventurous today. I visited the Pew Research Center to find some data that I could use for my example. I picked an article on Book Reading and the research on ebooks vs. traditional books written by Andrew Perrin.
Perrin, A. (2016, September 01). Book Reading 2016. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/01/book-reading-2016/
I hope you have learned a little something today and are more prepared to try creating some of your own infographics. If anything, it will be a new and exciting way to present information to your kiddoes. Remember that all of these programs have a learning curve so please be patient and endure. It will be worth the time investment. Trust me!
Wow! I love your Infographic it is very informative and easy to read. Thank you for all the great information you shared in your blog, and yes I will have to agree with you it takes patience to learn and all this new programs. I guess with time and practice we will become pros at it. Good luck and thanks again!
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I agree that Piktochart had a great level of features on a free account! That is always a plus.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I thought your infographic was really nice and quite informative.
Great infographic! I'll have to try Piktochart to create things for school!
ReplyDeleteI like that although you actually liked Piktochart more, you were adventurous and used easel.ly for this. Not everyone would do that, myself included, and would stay where they felt more comfortable. Bravo.
ReplyDeleteYour infographic is great! I will try using it in my classroom in some of the ways you mentioned. Thanks for the ideas!
ReplyDeleteYour posting is very informative and very well explained. I applaud your adventurous spirit in trying something new. We have to remember to step out of our comfort zones and try new things, just like we ask our students to do. Great job!
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