One of the ideas I scribbled down at the start of the year for a project was infographics.
Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly, such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education. With an information graphic, computer scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians develop and communicate concepts using a single symbol to process information.
They’re everywhere these days, and I like the way they give an opportunity to potentially give quite a wide scope for coverage. They also play to the way many students like to collect ‘facts’ from history, and also bring an opportunity to bring in some numeracy – not something I find that easy to do. There’s loads out there, but you could start with coolinfographics.com if you want to get your head around the kind of thing I’m talking about. Have a look at this example of this history of the American Presidency.
The idea rose back up the list inspired by this post from Free Technology 4 teachers, which in turn linked to this video from Kathy Schrock.
So now I’m looking for some help putting some flesh on the bones.
I’m thinking I might try and run the project either at the same time for all three KS3 year groups, or one after the other to provide some motivation
I’m probably going to set up a Google Spreadsheet shared between the class in order to gather the data we need.
I’m thinking about getting each class to brainstorm the categories they want to investigate within a theme. The yr 9 theme will almost certainly be ‘20th Century’. Yr 7 & 8 themes I’m less sure about. There’s always kings and queens to fall back on, but I’d love some other ideas.
Once we’ve got the data I’m thinking maybe getting different groups to sketch out one part, but I’m not sure how we get in a uniform design. The thought did cross my mind about trying to hand it all over to one of the Graphics classes to see if they want to take it on (what do you think @nicfranc?) Alternatively I could offer a small group who wanted to to come and have a couple of lunchtime sessions to put them together, but that’s going to be a lot of lunches. Alternatively, we just go low fi and do a cut and paste job. Anyway, I’m rambling…
So, dear reader, it’s your turn. Suggestions? Comments? Ideas? I’d love to hear them below.
Nb – This has been crosses posted at the schoolhistory.co.uk teachers forum