graphical design + INFORMATION =

Infographics combine data with design to enable visual learning. This communication process helps deliver complex information in a way that is more quickly and easily understood - Mark Smiciklas

Beautiful too look upon, robust in their ability to express large amounts of data or complex ideas in a series of images or a single picture, infographics are without a doubt one of the more interesting applications of web-based software that were traditionally the domain of mad men-esque advertisers.

Here is a great example of an infographic, which (created by the Huffington Post) usefully is about infographics -  -  -  ->

While the 'idea' of representing information visually is certainly not a new concept, the use of technology through websites - like infogr.am, visual.ly, and piktochart.com  - have greatly placed the ability to create these type of documents at the fingertips of the average web user.

Which means that even the most graphically or statistically incapable teacher (or student!) might be able to throw together some eye-catching visuals to augment what might have been another text or data heavy presentation.

As we know from 'Success for all Learners', differentiating our instruction in order to meet the individual learning needs of our students is an important part of lesson planning for today's teachers. By utilizing graphical designs to meet the needs of our visual-spatial learners, infographics may be used in support of a teachers pedagogy - if used properly.

I was able to create my first infographic to use in a presentation for another course, using StatsCan data to give a Canadian perspective to the content we were discussing from our American text book. The only difficult issue I encountered was adding the visual to a PowerPoint document, as infogr.am is primarily meant for sharing in web-based contexts (like this!). 

Please click and explore:

Family types of Canadian Parents | Infographics