An Alternative to PowerPoint and Posters...Please

I have been experimenting with infographics as an alternative presentation format to the usual suspects of PowerPoint, Prezi, and the classic poster.  Infographics are visual representations of information with the intention of presenting complex ideas in a simple and easy to understand format.   What really separates an infographic from a poster is the idea of simplicity in the presentation of the information.

My 8th grade classes have been studying slavery in the United States and I wanted an engaging way for them to research and present their understanding of living conditions for African American slaves during the 19th century.  I teach in Vietnam at an American international school with an almost exclusively Vietnamese student population.  Teaching American history can be a bit challenging because there is a lack of context and background knowledge.  I turned to infographics as a tool to both engage students with the topic and to get them thinking critically about how to best present their knowledge.  I was very pleased with the results of the project and the discussions that sprang from their research.

Here are a few of the final products.

  

This project was not only a great way for students to present their findings, but also an opportunity to touch on visual literacy skills.  We are living in the digital age and how we communicate ideas and information is constantly changing.  Students need to be equipped with knowledge about visual aesthetics and how it can effect how efficiently their ideas are communicated to an audience.  For this particular assignment I stressed to students the importance of color choice, contrast, font, alignment of objects, and style repetition.  I also had them look at a number of exemplar infographics to get an understanding of how they differed from a simple poster.

The program I used for the project was easel.ly.  It is a free program and simple to use.  The one limitation I found with the program was the small size of each template.  Many of my students found a way around this by creating multiple slides that they later joined together using photojoiner.net.