Cool Picture
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Infographics and Language Learning

A picture is worth 1000 words. Never more accurate with Infographics! And INFOGRAPHICS ARE about words AND languages.

FULL Disclosure: I have zero artistic talent!

DOUBLE Full Disclosure: I once took an art class and … could barely sharpen my sketching charcoal!

I just missed out on a course about Infographics at the library yesterday. I am hoping they offer it again! And just what ARE Infographics? Well, according to Wikipedia:

Infographics (a clipped compound of “information” and “graphics”) are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly.^[1]^[2] They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends.^[3]^[4] Similar pursuits are information visualization, data visualization, statistical graphics, information design, or information architecture.^[2] Infographics have evolved in recent years to be for mass communication, and thus are designed with fewer assumptions about the readers’ knowledge base than other types of visualizations.^[5] Isotypes are an early example of infographics conveying information quickly and easily to the masses.^[6]

All those cool combinations of statistics, images, ideas, trends and INFORMATION in one, easily understood picture! Literally, a picture is worth 1000 words!

I have liberally saturated some posts with Simpsons gifs and memes, and I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to find some Simpson infographics! LOL!

But why use Infographics? Basically, and I am truly over-simplifying, but … we areALL students of VISUAL learning! Visuals can improve learning by over 400%! AND ‘The average person can recall 65 percent of visual information ten days later (only 10% of what they heard)‘. Those are astonishing numbers for success in learning … ANYTHING and EVERYTHING!

Confucious was right ….”I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

The topic of student teaching (practicums) came up at Digital Coffee today and the best and most powerful teaching lessons I remember, not only when I was a student teacher, but also AS A STUDENT, were always the most visually stimulating, interesting and sometimes, confusing lessons! But their impact is long-term, at least on me!

Oh, the stories that … could be a future OAC post about teaching ‘BG’ …. that is short for … BEFORE GOOGLE! LOL! Or even ‘BtI’ – Before the Internet!

Yup, I grew up when Amazon was ….. a river! And Social Media required … leaving the house!

And one of the most famous of ALL Infographics is something ALL of you have studied in school, potentially from about Grade 6 on … maybe even earlier – Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, 1869!

And I also discovered some ANIMATED Infographics, which takes visual learning to a whole new level! Okay, so the last one is a .. penguin! LOL! I bet you will remember THAT one, if only because it is such a black and white issue!

Click on each one to open in a new tab.

And the usual assortment of recently searched interesting links, videos and other cool stuff – but beware, you may now have an overwhelming urge to discover a new element and add it to the Periodic Table!