Piktochart: Week 7 Cool Tool

     I have chosen to use Piktochart. It creates infographics which can be used in the classroom, but also in real life for presentations and other uses. With this program, I created an infographic for a book. I have a friend, Peter Schmotzer, who recently released his book online, and asked me to create something interesting to help give the book some publicity. The infographic is a little difficult to read when I shrunk it down to post on this blog, which is something I told him to keep in mind. However, I was overall pleased with what I could create using this application.

     It is fairly user friendly. I found a few bugs (random white box that kept appearing) in the program. I’m not sure if these were because I was using the program on an older computer, or if they are issues with the program itself. The base model of the program, which would be effective in the classroom, is free. In order to upgrade to the Pro version, which gives you a lot more templates and designs, it is $27 per month. You can also create presentations in the style of an infographic using this program.

     Overall, I liked creating an infographic using this program. I think it would allow students a chance to present information in a different format than they are used to. It could be used to discuss a topic, do a book review, and could probably have many other creative uses in the classroom. I would probably use it once a year in the classroom.

     In my science classroom, an option that I think may be interesting would be to randomly assign students parts of the cell, and have them create an infographic for their given part. I could also use it for biomes, when working in an Earth Science classroom.
I would use this tool to help students who are visual learners be able to see information broken up into different sections. The target audience for this program would definitely be no younger than junior high. At this age, I believe students would be able to create their own infographics fairly easily.

     Adolescents who aren’t as creative could use a pre-made template, while others who are more creative could create templates by uploading pictures. It gives students who enjoy expressing their creativity a chance to do so. I think that students may have difficulty figuring out how to break information apart into sections. Working in partners or groups could help with this issue. Overall though, I like this program and will likely incorporate it into the classroom, especially because it could be used later in life.