Wednesday, February 17, 2016

2015-16 #2) Thing 25: Infographics & Data Visualiation

I have seen Infographics used in many areas, but I have never created one myself.  Until recently, I never had the need to I supposed.  A few weeks ago my boss asked me to gather data for her on the statistics of our Online Credit Recovery (OCR) Program, now that we were halfway through the 2015-2016 school year.  This is the first full year that I, along with one other colleague, have been the system administrator for our eLearning platform.  We use the platform for many programs - OCR, Virtual AP courses, Virtual Initial Credit courses,  Online Professional Development for staff, and an online district resource area for staff.
This year we centralized the program and created a program school called the Virtual Academy of Rochester.  Our department hired staff that rotates around the district providing support for students taking an online class.  This requires a lot of time and man-power, so there are many eyes on the program.  Everyone wants to see data on how well the program is working - how well the resources are being used.  As one of the system administrators, it is my job to provide much of that data.
As I mentioned, we were looking at the data recently since we were halfway through the school year and had some students who graduated in January.  My boss wanted to look at that data so I collected it and then thought about how best to present it.  Sure we had all the charts that everyone could look at, but that isn't as powerful as visuals, so I took the opportunity to experiment with creating an infographic!  I came to my Cool Tools lesson page and began reading through all the resources on infographics as well as taking the time to explore a few of the web based programs I could use to create one of my own.  I settled on Piktochart and got to work!  It was pretty easy to get started and soon I had my complete page - that is because I had all of my data already gathered and ready to go! It was fun to make - much more fun that the usual Powerpoint or Google Sheets presentation.  It doesn't have a whole lot of writing on it in the way of explanations, however it is going to be used as a part of a presentation, so the explanations will be a part of that.  I feel that there is nothing worse than presentation where almost all of the detail is written down and I could have just read the document myself!  I think having a conversation with supporting visuals is much better, and hopefully my infographic will accomplish just that!
I am glad I took the time to finally learn how to make one and am happy with the results.  I plan to use Piktochart more in the future!
Take a look and see what you think!  Remember, you are not getting the whole presentation, but I still think you can get the gist of the data!