Easelly starts off by claiming their mission to be: "To enable anyone to present information in a visual way," and that is a great starting point for many of my students, as well as the professionals I work with. The issue in the past with attempting to teach students about visual data and the creation of infographics has been first, I'd have to teach them how to use the creation-tool itself before the gathering and making sense of data even begins. To many teachers, this creates a problem. Either they cannot seem to find the time to teach both their own content and how to use a new tool, or they do not feel comfortable in their own skills with it. Easelly eliminates the need to spend an entire day teaching students how to use the product, and with a little bit of instruction, will allow brand new users the chance to create stunning infographics in no time at all. The first thing that the user notices upon creating their free account is the hundreds of pre-made templates and public visuals made available. Students often become discouraged when I show them quality infographics because they believe they would never be able to create something like that. Easelly makes even the most novice users feel that they have the power to create something as visually pleasing as professionally-made infographics.
Once the users gets in and begins creating their infographic, they are given several options for elements to add, including templates, backgrounds, media, text, and charts. For students wishing to add a bit more flair to their projects, Easelly also includes animations to create dynamic charts. The tool also enables the user to resize, download, and share their project with 'ease'. Users would be able, with very little formal instruction, to create professional looking infographics without the need for days of tutorials beforehand.
Piktochart claims themselves to be "Your all-in-one visual communication solution" with the ability to "turn any text-heavy content into a visual story," which sounds exactly like what it would be used for in the classroom. Upon creation of a free account, the user is directed to the dashboard where all of the design will take place. Unlike Easelly, there are no templates or pre-made infographics at first glance, but in finding the "Inspire Me" section of the website, there are hundreds of ready-made ideas to borrow from. Selecting "Create New" from the dashboard will allow the user to see different types of products to create, including infographics, presentations, posters, reports, and social media content. It is after selecting your product type that the user will begin to see some templates for where to start creating their product.
Piktochart includes many of the same creation elements that Easelly contained, with the ability to add shapes, lines, ready-made images, backgrounds and photos to either a blank design or a template of your choosing. The editing section of the website seems to have more features than other web tools, but there may be more than a student would feel comfortable using. Piktochart also includes simple ways to download and share the final product, as well as an option to preview your work as you go. For experienced users, Piktochart may be the way to go in order to create the most visually-stunning infographics and other presentations, but it may be overwhelming for students or users creating something like this for the first time.
Infogram offers users the chance to "Create engaging infographics and reports in minutes," which sounds ideal for the classroom setting. Upon reaching the homepage, users are greeted with a video-clip of someone creating an infographic in real-time, and I believe it sets the tone for the entire website. Allowing the user a chance to see how certain features work is a great way to inspire them to use some of those tools in their own infographic. Upon signing up for an account, the user is presented with several options for an account type, including free, pro, business, and enterprise accounts. Seeing the various levels of accounts offered by Infogram, I find myself thinking that this platform may be for more professional use, and may be too difficult for an average student to understand. But upon seeing everything the free version allows for, I am impressed by the different options available.
When beginning creation on a project, the user is presented with different options to get started, some of which include single charts, maps (which I had not previously seen on other platforms, although the option may have been there), infographics, and dashboards, which I have recently found to be incredibly useful presentation tools during the COVID-19 pandemic. Upon selecting a pre-made template for an infographic, I decided that I wanted to see how charts and graphs function on the site. I clicked onto an already created chart with pre-filled data, and began playing around some. The options to change and edit the data into your own was incredibly simple and user-friendly, opening up a spreadsheet-style sidebar to help me navigate the data I wanted to use. Another powerful feature that I noticed more prominently on Infogram than the others was the ability to share the project with others who wished to work on it, allowing for real-time collaboration with multiple users. This feature alone leads me to believe that this would be perfect for students working in groups to create a visual representation of data.
Conclusion
While all three web tools had features and elements that would allow for incredible infographics to be created, I ultimately decided that Infogram was the one I preferred. The ease of data manipulation in pre-made graphs, as well as the ability to collaborate in real-time with other users leads me to believe that this could be a really powerful tool in the classroom. It had many of the other elements that Easelly and Piktogram featured, but I found the overall layout of the website, as well as the simplicity of the creation tools, to be the determining factor in my decision. Using data from a Pew Research article about dating during the digital age, I created the infographic below:
Information and data for infographic taken from:
Vogels, E.A & Anderson, M. (2020, May 8). Dating and relationships in the digital age. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/05/08/dating-and-relationships-in-the-digital-age/
Hi Andrew, I was going to pick the same article but I wasn't sure how I was going to put all the information together and actually make sense. Let's just say, you did a whole lot better job of putting the information together than I ever would have. I saw that you chose Inforgram as your choice, as I was trying to get comfortable using it, I just couldn't. Maybe it is the grade level that we teach that plays a role in picking a certain infographic web tool but kudos to you! I learned a lot from this article with the help of your infographic. Great job!
ReplyDeleteOne way to judge if an infographic is 'good' or not, is if you learn something by it. I thought your infographic was really good! I was interested in the information and learned a few statistics of my own. This would be a good infographic to put in a high school library.
ReplyDeleteI also liked how you disaggregated the data and made it visually pleasing with Infogram. While I chose Piktochart over Infogram, I would use Infogram if I needed a more professional looking infochart.
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