Other Uses Of Infographics.

We think of infographics as a way of conveying data in a visual form.  Math is full of data but what if we also used it to help introduce topics.

 What if we had students research the way the upcoming topic is used in real life rather than waiting for them to ask the questions of "When will I ever use this?"  Why not let them answer the question before we begin teaching the topic.

Since the slope is rate of change, we can take the examples found by students, discuss what element in the example is the rate of change or have students identify the rate of change and provide justification for their answer.

They could even provide actual examples for each situation.  In my examples, I start with variable cost for renting a taxi.  Students can check with local taxi companies for rates so they can calculate how much it would cost to travel to different places such as the store, the pool, or the airport.

What about party costs.  Students could call around to several restaurants or party providers to find out how much it would cost to rent a room and the cost of feeding people.  They can use that information to create the linear equation needed to plan a party.

Students could check the local sales flyers to find out the cost of various printers.  They can check the stores or online to find the cost of replacement cartridges.  They now have the information needed to figure out which is the best buy.

By doing this, they have already learned a lot and they have built a foundation they can relate the abstract to the general.

I can hardly wait to try it this fall.  I got the idea from the session on infographics at the Kamehameha Schools Educational Technology Conference.  Let me know what you think.

Infographics

I have been wanting to incorporate infographics into my classroom but could not figure out how to do it until today.  Its often hard to think of ideas that do not have a contrived feel to them.  So I got to thinking about the types of things I've seen on infographics and the answer is something with stats.

1.  Choose your favorite sports star and create an infographic on his/her stats.

2.  Look up information on what people ages 15 to 19, 20 to 30, 30 to 40, 40 to 50 spend their money on.

3.  Look up median house prices in various cities in your state.  What percent buy houses or rent?  how many are first time home buyers vs experienced home buyers?

4.  Find out the top 5 to 10 industries in the state.  Explore how many each employs, the percent, and how much money do they provide in taxes.

5.  How many of each type of car is owned in the state such as Ford, Dodge, etc or pick-ups, SUV's, compact, etc.

6.  Does the state have agriculture?  how much of what is grown, exported or used in the state.

7.  Find a top 10 list and use that.

Tons of choices and some of the infographics could be created from information students usually use to create bar graphs, histograms, etc.

So the next issue is checking out infographic apps for the ipad and websites on the computer to see which works best.