This post is part of an ongoing series about infographics and education. Last week’s post “Infographics That Teach You How To Build Better Infographics” can be found here.
This week, we’re highlighting a few infographics that help teachers (and anyone interested in effective teaching) make an impact on their students. Some of these infographics distill best practices; others bring up new and interesting ways to reach their students. All of them communicate how infographics themselves are good teachers. Keep that in mind as this blog series moves forward, and if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments. We’ll do our best to address them with upcoming posts.
Smart teaching: Understanding what a brain can’t ignore
This infographic teaches a lot about teaching. The first two figures – “50 percent of our brain focuses on processing visual information” and “we process visual information (60,000 times) faster than text” – showcase why this infographic about education is effective as an infographic. Something to keep in mind if your students need to wrap their brains around a topic!
27 Tips for Managing a Classroom
Anyone who teaches knows its requires as much in the way of people management as it does in the way of educational acumen. With that in mind, this infographic informs teachers about how to effectively coral young minds (without stifling them).
The creator, Mia MacMeekin, has a number of other infographics that help teachers be the best they can be. Check them out here!
iPad as the Teacher’s Pet
Considering how befuddled a lot of instructors are when they have to deal with PowerPoint, entrusting them with something more complicated seems like a dangerous proposition. That said, this infographic shows how an iPad can empower education. As this blog series moves forward, we’ll attempt to do the same with the infographic.
History of Classroom Technology
An interesting timeline that segues quite nicely from the last post, this one shows the history of teaching tools. Most interesting is that the infographic is an advertisement for TouchMathAdventures, yet it still manages to be informative. We’ll do a series on effectively marketing with infographics in the near future. For now, we want to note how this infographic makes a relatively dry history lesson more interesting (and how someone made an education advertisement that actually educates).
Why are Games Good for Learning?
Another infographic that attempts to empower a new mode of learning, this one combines facts and theories to make an argument for games as a teaching tool. Considering that 10% of learning comes from actual course work (and a staggering 70% from actually doing), there’s an argument to be made here.
A side note: though not as engaging as a game, challenging students to make an infographic on a particular topic – say, “why are games good for learning?” – will utilize a number of the same concepts discussed in this infographic.
Further learning…
There are a lot of great places to find infographics on education. Here are a few of our favourites:
- An Ethical Island – Mia MacMeekin’s site has a bunch of great infographics about how to teach effectively.
- Data Visualized: More on Teaching With Infographics – This New York Times series from 2011 presents and aggregates a lot of great information about infographics and their usefulness as a teaching tool.
- Education Infographics on Pinterest – If this post’s content has interested you at all, there’s plenty more here.
- Infographics as a Creative Assessment – A collection of resources about how infographics can be an effective learning tool. If the topic interests you, stay tuned for next week’s post!