Thing 5: Infographic Tool

Over the last couple years I have been really excited to do Infographic projects with classes.  Two years ago we expanded the 10th grade English research project to include the creation of a Website, with an Infographic.  It didn't go so well, mostly because we were forcing tools to do more than they were intended to do.  Unfortunately, after that I haven't gotten to do another Infographic project, but I am determined to get back to that.  I knew that since that rough attempt there have been many new tools created specifically for this purpose.
I have gathered some resources, one of which is a LiveBinder full of ideas and tools, and explored a few of these in the past, but I wanted to expand on that this summer, so for this final project I worked within easel.ly to create an Infographic.
It was a super easy tool to use, with templates to use for beginners and plenty of options.  The templates themselves will help students understand what Infographics are and give them some direction.  You also had the freedom to expand on what they had by uploading images, etc.  My only warning would be to make sure you create an account (free) before creating a visual, because if you try to create your account at the end you will lose what you did.  This is the Infographic that I created for our Classroom 21 teachers to explain the process of questioning to their students.
One of the things that I really appreciate about easel.ly is that you have plenty of options of how to save your visuals.  Sometimes I get frustrated with tools because they make it difficult to extract your creation from their site.  That was not the case here, you can download to your computer, embed, or create links.
Another tool that I have used, which also gives these options for using your images is piktochart.  This is another very usable Infographic tool, although I didn't find it to have as many options for beginners (templates, icons, etc.).  It also gives you a canvas larger than 8 1/2 x 11, which can make using the final product more difficult.
Having explored these tools I am confident that we can do some successful projects with students.  In fact, I already have two teachers on board to test it out this fall.  We are preparing a project for the 7th grade math classes, and another round with the 10th grade English class.  I look forward to sharing the results!