Digital v. Print an Infograph

This week for EDUC7726 Teaching, Learning, and Assessing in the Digital Era. We were asked to research and produce an infograph on a topic of our choice. What is an infograph? According to WhatIs.com an infographic, "is a representation of information in a graphic format designed to make the data easily understandable at a glance.  As a library media specialist, I thought researching ebooks v. print text would be an interesting infograph topic.  I chose to present my findings using Piktochart.

I found Piktochart to be very functional. I was able to select a template to format my work. I had access to several pictorial objects, and various styles of charts and graphs. I could also upload picture objects from my computer and add them to my infograph.  Piktochart also allowed me to include video.  I wanted to explore Piktochart and therefore decided to try the software's various functions.   I encountered small problems using Piktohart. On occasion, I was unable to save my work.   When this happened, I had to log out and log back in to continue editing.  Additionally, Piktochart's text wrapping was a problem.  I used a template for infograph and found that hard returns worked to help correct wrapping problems with my text.  Despite these small problems, I feel Pikotchart allowed me to produce an informative and visually appealing infograph. They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, and with Piktochart you can certainly accomplish this.

In my search for data on digital and print text, I used Google's advanced search tool to limit my search results to this past year.  I wanted the source of data for my infograph to be current.   Once I found information,  I was able to use Piktochart to produce various styles of charts and graphs to represent the data I found.

My professor, Laura Greenstein, provided a rubric for the infograph.  The rubric identified requirement such as:

• cite sources used
• at least 6 facts presented
• include related graphs and charts
• evidence of analysis
• visually appealing

 In my opinion, the infograph rubric clearly set the expectation for grading.  As a student, I knew exactly what was expected of me to earn full credit.  I plan to use a modified version of this rubric with students when we work on creating infographs or other visual representations. I would make adjustments to the rubric to specifically meet the objective I set for my students.

The data I found shows that print is still king over digital text. More books are published in print than in digital form.  Middle school students prefer digital text. Surprisingly,  college students prefer to learn from print textbooks over digital textbooks. There are individuals that prefer the feel and look of a book. Some who purchase e-books also purchase the book in print form. Some prefer print because they dislike being tethered to a computer to read.  College students like digital textbooks because they are less expensive, but they dislike that they can't resell their digital textbooks as they can  their print textbooks.  Self publishing is  a fast growing publishing area.   The Internet is the highway of self-publishing and e-books are the vehicle.  These were some of my finding. Please take a look at my inforgraph.

https://magic.piktochart.com/output/1834707-digitalorprint