PIKTOCHART INFOGRAPHIC

 PIKTOCHART INFOGRAPHIC

When I first saw an Infographic, I immediately thought it would be great for my math class.  The illustrations reminded me of a book I love using with my class called The Book of Perfectly Perilous Math: 24 Death-Defying Challenges for Young Mathematicians, by Sean Connolly (not James Bond).

The book has a series of stories that requires you to solve a problem to save the day.  I love how it incorporates reading into math problems.  With this in mind, I decided to create a little story involving money for my Infographic using the web tool Piktochart.  I chose the format "The Startup Way" because it could function as a timeline for my story.

I found it to be not very problematic creating a Piktochart.  I was a big fan of how easy it was to search for images/graphics and add text.  I believe that students would be able to figure out how to use this Web 2.0 tool after a bit of exposure and practice.

Next for me was writing the story.  I decided upon creating a word problem involving money.  The protagonist would go through the timeline both making and spending money, and the reader had to keep track of the balance.  To add to the difficulty level, I included events where students would have find fractions and percents of whole numbers.  At the very end, the reader would have to know how much money the protagonist has.  

BLABBERIZE

BLABBERIZE

Does this picture look familiar?  If it does, then you must have read my last blog where I created a Wordle.  I decided to make a Wordle that would list all the prime numbers under 100.  I was pleased with my creation, but wondered how I could enhance it even more.

Enter Blabberize!!! "Blabberize is a photo editing tool that creates talking animations from a photo or other image. Browse the ready-made blabbers or create."(www.teachersfirst.com)

Ok, I'll be honest, one of my colleagues told me that this web tool was one of the easier ones to understand and did not take that long to create your own.

When I researched the web tool, I quickly saw the appeal.  It is doesn't take long to do, is easy to create.

Step 1: Pick an image to import

Step 2: Make a mouth that moves and place it where you'd like on the image

Step 3: Add audio

As always, I was looking for creating something that was practical, and since I had already created a Wordle on Prime Numbers, I decided I would add audio to go along with it, so now students weren't only exposed to the visual, they had access to audio, which provided them with a definition of prime numbers, composite numbers, and how the number 1 is neither prime nor composite.  The fact that the message is coming from a "talking" elephant only adds to the engagement level.  This an easy-to use web tool that teachers and students should be able to create with little difficulty.

WORD CLOUD with WORDLE

WORDLE

A Wordle I created on Prime Numbers 2-97

     I was excited to try my first Wordle. "Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to your own desktop to use as you wish." (www.wordle.com)

     My first thought was to create a Wordle that centralized Howard Gardener's Multiple Intelligences.  I always like to talk about this at the beginning of the year.  I tell my students that why I feel really strongly about some of my intelligences, there are definitely areas of weakness.  I then ask them to reflect on their own selves and try to identify areas of strength and weakness.

     I wanted my Wordle to have "I Have Skills" in the largest font.  From there, I wanted to include a plethora of action verbs that illustrated how we all have skills, even if it's not always linguistic or mathematical.  When I hit "Go" I was surprised how hard it was to get I Have Skills to line up horizontally.  Another surprise, was how little space all of the text I copied and pasted actually took up. It was tiny!  Dissatisfied, I was determined to start again.

    Being a math teacher, I wanted my Wordle to be not only math related, but something that was useful as well.  I thought about what math concepts would work well with Wordle and finally decided on "Prime Numbers". I decided to copy and paste "Prime Numbers" a ridiculous amount of times so it showed up largest.  From there, I did the smallest prime numbers the next amount (3,5,7,11,13,17,19...) The larger the prime number, the less I copy and pasted (71,73,79...)

Photo Source

   After hitting "Go" and changing the Format a few times, I finally settled on Wordle that you see at the top of this screen.  I was satisfied with the size of "Prime Numbers" as well as all of the examples from 2-97.  I'm happy that I have created a Wordle that is aesthetically pleasing and informational at the same time.  This Web 2.0 Tool is very user friendly, so students should have no problem creating their own. Now, if only there was a way to add audio to it...(tune in next time for Blabberize).