Infographic as an Assessment

Recently I read on Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything about using infographics as a 21st Century Tool assessment.  It really opened my eyes.  You have probably seen simple ones in the USA Today.  I am always looking for new ways for students to demonstrate understanding (assessment).   Anything that stresses creation and moves away from traditional quizzes and tests is a good thing.

http://www.schrockguide.net/infographics-as-an-assessment.html

I am usually interested in infographics when I see them; they are much more interesting than a simple paragraph of information with an accompanying pie chart.  Here are a few:
The Digital Classroom
Teens and Money
March Madness
Real Estate Predictions
The combination of images and data is eye-catching.  More importantly the design of an infographic requires a greater depth of knowledge than simply guessing A, B, C, or D. 

Below there are several web tools to help create a full infographic or a single image.  However, I found a Word document works great for low-budget infographics.  The the image format menu allows you to remove the background of an image and/or modify the color.  You can put text in a textbox and move it wherever position you like.  SmartArt and shapes give you more options and the zoom allows you to work with small details. I made an infographic of my class using Word as an example for my students.  I saved it as a PDF file.  I used PowerPoint and Google Docs to make an image and graph.  The other images were edited in a separate Word document I used as a sketchpad.  I formatted all the images and textboxes in front of text.  My students will be making one on the Great Wall of China... I will definitely share the results. 

Visual.ly

Glogster (edu)

Creately--for diagrams

Google Public Data

TouchGraph--for networks and web diagrams

Stat Planet--maps and graphs