Teaching With Infographics | A Student Project Model

Laufenberg classDevon Thomas Students in Diana Laufenberg’s 11th grade history class discuss the infographics they created in a three-week project on environmental disasters. From left to right, the students are Ryan Francis, Luna Frank-Fischer, and Kern Clarke.

To close Infographics Week here on The Learning Network, I invited a classroom teacher (and self-described “fanatic” about the use of infographics in education) to detail a project I first heard her talk about on a National Writing Project-affiliated podcast called “Teachers Teaching Teachers.”

Diana Laufenberg has been a public school social studies teacher for the last thirteen years, eight at the middle school level and five in high school. She currently works at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, which is a partnership high school between the School District of Philadelphia and The Franklin Institute. The school describes itself as an “inquiry-driven, project-based high school utilizing a 1:1 laptop program to foster 21st century learning.”

Diana acknowledges that though the ready access to technology at a school like hers is a clear advantage, she spent eleven years in schools where access was limited — and she believes that “effective project-based, inquiry-driven learning is not dependent on technology.”

This spring, Diana and her students used the Gulf oil spill as the starting point for creating infographics to tell the stories of the top ten worst man-made environmental disasters in American history.

Her three-week process, which she both describes broadly and details step-by-step below, seemed to me like something many teachers could learn from and/or adapt. Though it is elaborate, I was impressed by how rich and thoughtful the unit was, and felt Learning Network readers might be as well.

So here’s Diana. Let us know if you’ve done an infographics project yourself, and consider writing in to our new Great Ideas From Our Readers feature to tell us about it.


Learning, Visualized
By DIANA LAUFENBERG

It feels like we’re all suffering from information overload or data glut. And the good news is there might be an easy solution to that, and that’s using our eyes more. So, visualizing information, so that we can see the patterns and connections that matter and then designing that information so it makes more sense, or it tells a story, or allows us to focus only on the information that’s important. Failing that, visualized information can just look really cool.

— David McCandless in the opening to his TED talk, The Beauty of Data Visualization

In the history classroom we are always developing visual literacy. Between analyzing primary source documents like photographs, paintings and advertisements, and interacting with charts and graphs, we constantly ask students to understand the ways images communicate.

Infographics work in the classroom because they grab students and allow an entry point to learning — and because they sum up pages and pages, even chapters, of information that would take a reader hours to process.

Interactive infographics, like this one from The Times on Mapping the Human ‘Diseasome,’ make kids want to immediately start clicking around to see what’s what. For a teacher who prioritizes an inquiry-driven classroom, that’s a great starting point.

Asking students to consume infographics, though, is only one side of the equation. Teaching kids to create their own infographics — to break down complex information, then use image, symbol and text to communicate it attractively and effectively — is the other, but it’s not easy. It pushes students outside their normal, comfortable “school” reading-and-writing habits, but it gives them practice in the ultimate 21st century skill: telling stories with data. In my experience, it also causes the new information they’ve researched and communicated to “stick.”

This spring, I sought to balance a year’s worth of reading and analyzing infographics in my 11th grade history class by asking students to create their own. To do it, I seized upon the largest current event happening in the United States at the time: the Gulf oil spill.

When we learn American history, we’re unraveling a story that is both 300 years old and 300 seconds old. Weaving a consistent narrative between what is and what was is one of the most effective ways I’ve found to engage students.

Our goal, then, was to create infographics that effectively told the stories of the top ten worst man-made environmental disasters in American history, but to continually use our study of the Gulf spill as a framework for comparison.

At the time, news about the spill was dynamic, and changing hourly. My students and I used the Times infographic Tracking the Oil Spill in the Gulf to check back every day and keep up with the news as it was known…and shown. We also looked at examples of less effective infographics on the spill for contrast. And we dissected Randy Krums’s 10 Tips for Designing Infographics as we went, looking at all his examples.

Then the really hard part began. Working in small groups, students were assigned a disaster to learn about and represent graphically. In their reflections afterward, many of them commented on how surprisingly difficult that turned out to be. Creating an effective infographic was a challenge most underestimated.

Today we find ourselves in an educational landscape where information is limitless and access points ubiquitous. Classrooms need to reflect that reality and equip students with habits of practice to make meaning of more information than they will ever know what to do with. Informational graphics are one of the best ways to start.


We asked Diana to summarize what she did, step-by-step, in her Environmental History unit.

Sequence of Classroom Activities: Diana’s Enviromental History Unit

Here are the steps my students and I went through in this three-week unit. Before we began, I gathered resources and planned activities against the three essential questions I wanted students to address:

  • What is the balance between the interests of individual and the interests of business with regard to the environment?
  • What role should the government play in regulating that balance?
  • How do the country’s past actions inform its current policies related to environmental issues?

1. Introduce theme to students.
For me, this began with the current events connection. We started by reading and discussing New York Times resources on the Gulf oil spill using this infographic to keep up with the news as it was known…and shown.

2. Spend time building background.
My class read and discussed the following to make historical connections to environmental disasters in general:

3. Focus whole-class investigation on one aspect of the unit’s theme.

Although I generally use a more distantly historic event, because of the uniqueness and enormity of the oil spill, I used it as the whole class investigation topic. To dig into the issues surrounding the spill, we closely studied infographics produced about it from a variety of news and other organizations.

All of our investigations fed back to the essential questions. For instance, I’d ask journal questions like, “Using the Times infographic we looked at yesterday, describe the potential impact on the wildlife living in the Gulf” and then ask them to further connect that impact to the potential economic impact on the individuals living in the Gulf. Then, for instance, we might go from there to reading/watching a segment on the projected economic impact.

4. Assign smaller collaborative investigations of topics that are related to the larger theme.

Students formed collaborative groups of three and then were randomly assigned one of the 10 disasters.

5. Provide students time and space to struggle with outside research and investigation, as well as to sort out the collaborative challenges.

Students were given four class periods (260 minutes) to research, collaborate and create the infographic. After a year of consuming infographics, they were well versed in the range of ways to represent information graphically. But when they were asked to tell a story with as little text possible, they had to evaluate what parts of a disaster were most important to tell, and how to best represent each piece of information. When they were stuck I would direct them back to Krum’s 10 Tips for Designing Infographics and also encourage them to revisit the bank of infographic examples we identified earlier.

They had to contend with the fact that sometimes there was too much information about an event, while other times there was not quite enough. They had to make decisions about how to graphically represent the most salient facts about “their” disaster. They had to internalize research and then grapple with finding the most effective means of telling a story. And they had to call on skills in design, research, presentation, collaboration and inquiry.

The students used oil spill infographics as they went to identify trends that were common with the historical disaster they were researching in groups. They examined both the Gulf disaster and their “own” disaster to create infographics that
1. Related the basic ‘story’ of their disaster;
2. Represented the public and governmental response directly following the incident;
and 3. Looked at the actions of the government and public over time.

6. Interact with the essential questions each day to discuss developing understandings, further inquiries and challenges.

We started each class with a journal question that continually focused the conversation around the three essential questions for the unit.

7. Present the work of collaborative groups to the whole class.

After the student conducted their research and grappled with the design of their infographics, it was time to unveil their creations. All of the infographics were printed out on 2’x3’ sheets of paper and displayed in the classroom for a gallery walk. We first discussed which infographic was “the best.” I didn’t qualify the statement or remind them of the requirements, just asked for their gut feelings.

Everyone in the class pointed out a particular infographic on the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. To them, its layout and visual appeal clearly exceeded that of any other example. I then asked the students to more carefully evaluate the infographics by taking time to read through the content. We reconvened and it was then that they realized the most visually appealing infographic did not have the best information. This was an enlightening realization.

8. Reflect individually, in groups and as a class as to learning successes and challenges.

Students were asked to reflect on the specific difficulties related to working collaboratively and creating their own infographics. They also reflected on similarities and differences between the Gulf oil spill and their assigned disaster. From there we projected forward to predict future behaviors by the American public, the American government, and business interests with regard to the Gulf oil spill, based on the lessons of the past. For example, during their investigations, students found that, regardless of the disaster, response followed a pattern: public interest was intense in the short term, but quickly shifted away from fixing the systemic problems that led to the disaster in the first place.

9. Revisit the essential questions and conduct a final conversation about the wealth of answers from the students.

Students were given a half-class period to respond to the essential questions in writing, giving specific examples. We then spent the other half of the class period discussing their insights.

10. Make predictions for or connections to other events, present or future, based on the trends and patterns observed in the thematic investigation.

Based on the information gathered in the research, students were asked to predict the future path of policy related to the Gulf oil spill and future man-made environmental disasters. For example, many spoke of the likelihood that the government policies would shift immediately following the spill — as they have after other environmental disasters — but that within a decade the strength of conviction for policy enforcement would wane.


For more on infographics, check out these posts:

Teaching With Infographics | Places to Start

Teaching With Infographics | Social Studies, History, Economics

Teaching With Infographics | Science and Health

Teaching With Infographics | Language Arts, Fine Arts and Entertainment

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Thank you for sharing this. I am sharing this with my teachers so that we can adapt its use. It is so aligned with the the common core standards and their principles we are required to incorporate this year.

I think that the use of Infographics is wonderful! I myself have never used infographics in the classroom, but from what I’ve read it seems like a very innovative way of learning. It encourages students to think outside of the box. I would like to use infographics, I’d like to experience it first hand to see what the key differences are between traditional learning and the use of this new tool to do so. Hopefully my school will integrate infographics into our learning system soon.

Fantastic step by step on how to use this in the classroom! I am very inspired and shared this article with colleagues today. We’re planning a yearlong, inquiry-based learning project for our connected classroom students (3 classrooms in different towns around the school district will be learning collaboratively via video conferencing, moodle classroom spaces, elluminate, etc). I suggested using infographics to present the year’s learning as I think it would be a great way to incorporate visual literacy and showcase student progress at the end of the year! Thanks for sharing this!

Thank you very much for sharing this. You have designed an exceptional, inspiring project. Your students are very lucky to have you as their teacher.