Infographics as Assessment

My blog post this week was inspired by this tweet: 

Infographics as Assessment http://t.co/3ybypW5 by @rmbyrne <--Can't believe I never paid more attention 2 this awesome blog! #edchat #sschatless than a minute ago via Twitter for iPad Favorite Retweet ReplySuzie Nestico
nesticos

(Holey moley - I "baked a blackbird pie" and it actually worked!) 

Which lead me to a blog, and then another blog, where I found a fun video all about infographics  (https://sites.google.com/a/kathyschrock.net/infographics/home).  The video was a brief tutorial on what is an infographic, lots of examples, and directions and tools for making one. 

An infographic is simply visual representation of information - a way to present complex information or data simply and clearly.  Some types of infographics include USA Today snaphsots, presenting statistical information, timelines, and describing a process (you see a lot of these in the Atlantic used to varying degrees of effectiveness).

The steps to creating an infographic are 1. select a layer based image editor (such as pixlr), 2. have students investigate types of visuals, 3. conduct research, 4. create a rough draft, 5. teach students about copyrights for the images they will be using (Creative Commons), 6. gather and create assets, 7. teach a little bit about effective use of color, font, and design, 8. teach about layout, and 9. teach an organizational model (LATCH - location, alphabet, time, category, or hierarchy).  Now that sounds like a lot of steps, and I think it could take a while to go through the first time.  But after that, students would be able to concentrate on the meat of the assignment instead of the design and procedural details.  Putting students into groups could also help smooth the process, especially if each group contained at least one student who is very tech savvy.  After the students are familiar with how to make an infographic, the procedure would be streamlined to something like: 1. keep it simple, 2. decide on a color scheme, 3. research some great stats and facts, 4. make sure the arguments hold, 5. make complex data easy to understand,  6. draw conclusions, 7. cite the sources used.

Beside the fact that they look pretty cool, what I liked best about the infographics is using them as an authentic assessment.  We see infographics all the time - in the newspaper, in magazines, on web pages.  So they really are authentic.  They just feel more authentic and useful than "make a poster."  But what I like most is how simple they are - students really have to pare all the information down to the essentials to create a great infographic, so they have to demonstrate that they really know what they are talking about.  Making them requires some pretty important literacy skills pertaining to searching for information, getting essential points out of a reading, and sharing information succinctly Another think I like is that they can be used for persuasion or for information, but either way for verbs pretty high up on Bloom's taxonomy.  Besides the time required to teach the process, a problem I see is it could be difficult to create a grading rubric that still leaves a lot of room for student-driven creativity.  Overall, I'm excited to try using these as performance assessment!