Infographics: Creating with the Collection, Analysis, and Interpretation of Data, by Katherine Hlousek, Librarian, Emiliano Zapata Academy

It is essential to continue to introduce new technologies and programs to our students and further develop their information literacy, visual literacy, and technology skills as 21st century learners and creators. I recognize the importance of introducing new technologies and an emerging platform for creating and sharing information: infographics. During the third quarter seventh grade students are investigating, collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and producing an infographic final product using student-created and collected data from a Google Form survey. An infographic is a visual representation of information, data, or knowledge. The purpose of this project is to further develop students’ technological skills, their ability to collect, analyze, and synthesize data and information, and their visual literacy skills to create a visually appealing and accurate product. The infographic unit incorporates many disciplines, including math, English, technology, and art, in addition to library science.  

During this unit, students are completing the steps of the inquiry-based learning model – planning, gathering information, processing information, creating a product, sharing new information, and evaluating learning. This unit was designed with achievable weekly goals for students to reach and complete. Instead of preselecting topics for students to research, I designed this unit to be student driven.  Students selected a topic of their choice that they are already familiar with, for example: general interests of seventh graders, sports, hobbies, etc.  The data students are collecting and analyzing will come from their peers, thus making this research and technology project authentic and meaningful.

I began the unit with an introduction to infographics and an analysis of several examples of infographics. Students worked in teams to determine the purpose and message of the example infographics. The visual and high-interest infographics were appealing and students were eager to begin their infographic project. After selecting a topic, students created a Google Form with ten or more questions. As a mini lesson, I reviewed the various question and answer options in Forms as well as the importance of providing a “none of the above” and an “other” answer option in order to gather accurate data. Once students completed their Form, students shared the link to their Form in Google Classroom. I compiled a class list of all the Google Forms to ensure students had access to and answered all of the surveys. After answering all of the Google Forms for their classmates, students spent time analyzing their data. Students can analyze their data by reviewing the responses of their Form in the Sheets spreadsheet format as well as in a more visual format.  After opening the Sheets response for the student-created Form, click on “Form” at the top navigation, and then click on “Show summary of responses” to view the data in a visual format.  Students will look for relationships or trends in the student-collected data. Students then transferred interesting data points and relationships observed from the Form into an infographic created with Google Drawings.

Additionally, this lesson presents the perfect opportunity to review copyright, creative commons, and citations when students are selecting images and graphics to use for their infographic.

Last year I taught an infographic unit to seventh and eighth grade students. Perhaps the greatest success from the prior unit was the transferable skills students developed. The eighth grade team of teachers was shocked when one of the students created an infographic for a social studies project instead of a traditional written response. I was extremely proud that not only the work students were creating while in the library was receiving notice but students were also utilizing the new tools and skills they learned outside of the library and other classes.