Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Infographics BYOL Session at ISTE

Today, I am at the ISTE conference in Philadephia, attending a session on Infographics. I have already blogged about my excitement to attend this session, so you can imagine my surprise that as I sit here, Kathy Schrock is not leading it. Hmm...I guess I will figure it out later. Instead, this post will be composed of my notes. Here is the Google Page set up for the session. So, according to the nice lady next to me, Kathy Schrock's infographics session was YESTERDAY and this is yet another one. Oh. This one is led by Jane Krauss (a project based learning specialist) and Diana Laufenberg.

There are a LOT of iPads here, a whole bunch of sleek tablets. I'm plunking away on my eeePC netbook trying not to feel like the poor kid in my dollar store sneakers.

They start off here with a Minard Map from 1869, showing Napolean's Russian battles. It's supposedly one of the first infographics ever, especially showing the juxtaposition of data. The next infographic asks us to figure out which mountain in Utah would be best for an expert and then to add data to the existing graphic.

Next, they play David McCandless's TED Talk on "The Beauty of Visualization of Information."


Here was an example shown of an amazingly good infographic from The Guardian showing protests in the Middle East: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2011/mar/22/middle-east-protest-interactive-timeline as well as this one about privacy settings on Facebook over time: http://www.mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

My seatmate went to Kathy Schrock's Infographics session yesterday and says that she gave this advice: Start with viewing and dissecting them first. Then ask what could you change to make it better or to add to enhance the graphic?

Project Ideas:
- Make an Flowchart infographic of a government function, like the Greencard application process.
- Use a base graphic showing US Immigration numbers showing spikes and drops and then assign creation of a graphic showing what predicted flow may happen in the next couple years.

Tools they showed--there are more tools on the links page at the top of this post:
Many Eyes from IBM
LucidChart

Overall, this was a good session. I like how it was hands-on. I'm not sure that I got much out of it that I would not have found on my own but it was certainly dedicated time to explore.

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