Infographics - The Way to Show Information or Data

What is a way to display information or a lot of data? Well, one way would for sure be using an infographic. What is an infographic you may ask? Well according to the Oxford English Dictionary, an infographic (or information graphic) is "a visual representation of information or data." However, in easier terms, it is simply a collection of imagery and data visualizations such as pie charts or bar graphs with minimal text to give an overview of a topic. Infographics are engaging visuals that communicate information quickly and easily. 

For this blog, I will be sharing three websites that offer the help of making infographics.  You can click on the image and it will take you directly to each site.

      

Piktochart

When you first log in, you come to your Dashboard where you can filter by creating a Piktochart Visual or Piktochart Video. For the purposes of this review, I focused on the Piktochart Visual; however, the Piktochart Video is a neat added feature not to be forgotten. Also on this dashboard or your home location, is any work that you have already created in the "Workspace" area. It does provide ease of access to be able to find something you've been working on quickly and easily. 

If you have not created an infographic on this site, the first step is to scroll down on the dashboard page to where the center states "Create New." This is where the fun begins! You have the option of starting with a completely blank canvas or using one of their pre-made templates and just inputting your own information. I am one of those "don't recreate the wheel" people, so I love the option of choosing templates to go through.

Once you find the template you want, you are able to choose from things such as icons, text, charts, maps, and styles. Each of those main categories breaks down even further giving you options for tons of illustrations and graphics of your choice. You are even allowed to upload your own images, so have fun putting those Bitmojis on your infographic and make it, even more, your own!

After you finish creating your infographic, then you are able to preview it before you share or print it. This particular site, Piktograph, was very user-friendly. Here is one that I created based on information gathered from an article on the Pew Research Center site.

Pros

• Can sign up for free using an email address or logging in through Google
• You can download the final project as a PNG, PDF, or Powerpoint
• User friendly
• A large bank of icons, graphics, charts, maps, and styles to choose from for free
• Clean-looking dashboard (easily find projects)

Cons

• A free account only allows 2 downloads
• A paid account is required for some higher graphics
• The Pro version for educators and students is $39.99

Easelly

Now for this one, I did not create a final infographic but did play around enough on the website to fill you in a bit. When you first open this site, you are able to set up a free account just like you could on Piktograph. You can use your email or be able to sign in by linking your Google account. 

There are a few options once you log in and are redirected to the nice clean dashboard. You can create a design, search their templates, create folders, or work on a project you have already started on. There are three different pricing levels based on your status and what you are needing. Each one adds a bit more to the price increase. Rates as of right now are Student $2 per month; Individual $4 per month; or Business $5 per month.

I do like that when you click "new design" the first thing to pop up is a sizing chart for you to select what size you want for the final project. This is great for making flyers or even posters! The graphics they offer for free are pretty generic but they are still colorful and would work well on items. They have a great selection of premade templates for the user to be able to go in and edit the information and graphics. This is super helpful for those like me that do not want to "reinvent the wheel" and start from scratch.

Overall, Easelly is very user-friendly and would be great to use with students and teachers for a fair cost. 

Infogram

For our final glance at a site to help build and create infographics, we will look at Infogram. My first impression of this site was not great compared to the sites above. I felt like the dashboard wasn't as clean and nice as the first view. There was a bit much going on and I had to really focus on what I was wanting to do.

I decided to go through the basic steps and start by clicking "create a project." After an overwhelming experience on the dashboard, I was pleasantly surprised that it immediately takes you to the templates. There are only twenty-five templates that fall under the free plan on Infogram. 

A huge downside to this site is that after you select your template, you are immediately prompted with whether or not you are making this infographic public or private. I prefer the use of private; however, only the paid version will allow for the selection of private. This is an issue if you were to use this with students in a classroom. After making it public just so I could play with more features, I became overwhelmed again. There is just too much on the screen to be able to figure out without clicking around too much which button you need. While this site had a lot of what was offered on the previous two, it was just not laid out comfortably for me personally. However, I would love to hear from anyone that has a different experience on this site.

Conclusion

In conclusion, infographics are a great resource and tool to use with students, teachers, and even community members. For example, maybe you are trying to highlight which genre of books are being checked out the most or the number of times students are visiting the library; you could use an infographic to get this information across versus a boring excel sheet or an article to read. Infographics are appealing to the eye and will help grab a reader's attention.

**Please note, to view images more clearly, please click on the image itself.**

Sources:

https://www.lexico.com/definition/infographic

https://piktochart.com/

https://www.easel.ly/dashboard

https://infogram.com/app/#/library

Anderson, M., Faverio, M., & McClain, C. (2022, June 2). How teens navigate school during covid-19. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. Retrieved June 26, 2022, from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/06/02/how-teens-navigate-school-during-covid-19/

Social Media and the Library - Do they go together?

Who does social media actually reach and inform? Well anyone that has a phone pretty much has access to social media, so in theory, it is a great tool to use to reach more users. So is social media something that should be incorporated into the library for a school? Personally, I feel that it should because I think you could reach even more users in your community through the multitude of social media options that most people use.

Facebook

Most people are somewhat familiar with Facebook, but maybe not all the detailed search options that are built-in. I played around with a lot of the searching features to work to find a few school libraries that used Facebook this past school year. The first thing I did notice is that most of these libraries were high school libraries, while only a handful were elementary libraries. I'm assuming this might be because the high school's target audience is above the age of 13, which is the required age for a Facebook account.

I skimmed several local ones plus some in other states. Most highlighted posts to the public about summer reading programs they offer or they are promoting to help keep students engaged and active readers through the summer months. Throughout the school year, scrolling back posts, they focused on posting events happening in the library ranging from book challenge activities, Donors Choose projects to get the public to help build the library collection more, to highlighting the Sora app that a lot of libraries are using, and much more. One thing that really stuck out was that they are not updated regularly. Most of the ones I skimmed through had a lot of postings during the time that everyone was doing "online learning," but then not many posts at all this past school year.

There were a few libraries that actually posted pictures of students engaged in learning while in the library. It was neat to see some of the flexible seating options within these libraries. I found too many of these to pick which one to share in particular, but it was neat to see how everyone has their seating arrangements in their libraries. One post that really caught my eye was a "Bookmobile" that would operate during the summer to keep kids reading. (BPESLibrary) This was a great way to reach out to the public to let them know. On one of my local school's library Facebook pages, they showed a video of a new 3-D printer that was just gifted to them and how it worked. (VidorHSLibrary) That was neat to see and I think they could promote it more by having students interact with the printer while they do an updated video. It was good to see that not only are libraries all about books but there is so much more offered within those walls. While there were not many comments, most posts on these pages did have "likes" which shows me that it is reaching users, but how many are actually interacting with it versus just clicking a like button.  Maybe the library could pose questions that would generate comments and responses.

A few advantages of using Facebook are the number of users that it can reach. Out of the current trendy social media aspects, this one has been around the longest. It is super easy to use and Facebook users have the option to mark the page as a priority meaning it will show up on their feed first. This is great for those that really want to be involved in the library.

A few disadvantages that stick out with using Facebook, is the user age requirement. Elementary librarians would need to work a bit harder to get parents and the community on board with their Facebook page as their students would not be old enough to have an account to see what is being posted. Another disadvantage is that there are so many businesses that use Facebook now, that sometimes posts can get "lost" in a user's stream.

I do not think Facebook's popularity is going away but it has shifted a bit with Tik Tok being the new front runner; however, I still feel like it is a great way to reach the community and promote all things that are happening in the library. I did start up a page, which is completely bare as I'm not in the library yet, but I have it ready to go as soon as I am in that spot. Feel free to follow and hopefully in the near future I can rename it to match the school I will be working at.  https://www.facebook.com/Keeping-Literature-Lit

Twitter

Twitter is hard for me personally. I set up an account years ago for professional development once to try to win prizes and then really never touched it again until one of our local libraries had a reading contest. I have started playing around with it and exploring people to follow. 

My first person to explore was Kathy Schrock and I'm not going to lie, my first thought was "Oh my, this person hasn't posted since 2020!" Until I quickly realized I was looking at a pinned tweet. Clearly, I still have some learning to do on Twitter, but hey I'm an education professional, so my learning never stops! I have used FlipGrid for years and did not know that I could do this! It was neat to watch what Ms. Schrock shared about how to use this Anchor app to make it an audio file to start a classroom PodCast! 

So neat! Now to get schools to not block Spotify and this would be a great asset in the library or classroom. Make sure and give @kathyschrock a follow on Twitter for sure!

Next up, I searched through Linda Braun's Twitter feed and immediately noticed that she likes to "retweet" information. One particular retweet that stood out to me was an article about how COVID has affected libraries across the world. One issue I do have with this is after clicking on the article on her feed, it takes me to their main feed, and then I still have to click the article again by highlighting the link and putting it in the toolbar. This is a bit time-consuming when you just want to view the article. After having to end up typing in the URL because you cannot copy from an image, it was an interesting read because you really only heard about issues in the classroom during the online learning time. Here is a link to follow Linda Braun @lbraun2000. 

A few other notable individuals to follow are Alan November, The Daring Librarian, and Jim Lerman, as they each play a key aspect in promoting new digital technology for educational purposes. While Alan's were a bit older on the posting side, they are still relevant to today. Most of his tweets are about how students need help to progress in research in the classroom. It appears he did quite a few web professional development courses for educators. He hasn't posted since 2019, but still some great tweets to glance through @NLearning. Gwyneth Jones (The Daring Librarian) has amazing tweets that range from articles about the rise of gun violence in communities to ways to help promote being an Ally for the LGTQB+ community. I absolutely loved that she creates items and lets you have them for free. One of her most recent items was the "Ticket to Ride" freebie printables! So neat to share what she has created to make life a little bit easier. See for yourself by checking out her account on Twitter, The Daring Librarian. Now Jim Lerman's tweets mainly focus on the technology side of education; however, he does also share some top lists about different genre groups, so he gives you a variety on his feed. Make sure to check him out @jimlerman.

Not only are there really good individuals to follow and read through on tweets, but a lot of professional organizations as well that pertain to education and the library. Before you wander too far, feel free to follow me on Twitter as I attempt to become a more active user on this platform. @jbertrand6th

Instagram

While I've had a personal Instagram for years and a classroom one for a few years, I decided to start a brand new account dedicated to books and the library. I spent some time taking screenshots from my personal Instagram of book reviews I did one year for a contest through our school and added them. I moved away from Instagram over the past few years as I feel like not many were really using it as much thanks to Tik Tok; however, I would like to get back into posting reviews on there for my students to see.  While I use Good Reads, I do not necessarily share that with my students, but I would feel good about sharing Instagram with them.

Using the highlight function of Instagram would be useful in the classroom or library by allowing students and yourself to promote new literature. Maybe you just got some new books to add to the library shelves and you want to highlight them first. This is an easy and fun way to do a quick video (highlight) of the new material and it would stay located right below your profile for easy access. I am still working on mine, but have already set up a highlight for some Graphic Novels that I've read this year and plan to set up a highlight for each genre as time allows. I really like how the highlights stay right below the profile for quick access.

One huge benefit of using Instagram would be to work with incentive programs. My local high school did this, which is why I had originally started the reviews, to help promote students to read more. It was fun skimming through the high school's Instagram, seeing other reviews, and getting more books added to my "to read" list. There are so many apps that allow you to make pictures fun and engaging before you even post to share, this would be an appeal to the teenage group for sure. For example, I tried a few apps for my Android and found one that would let me add text and clipart to a picture before sharing. I love how you can really personalize pictures before you share them to your feed, students would have fun with this for sure.

My only concern with Instagram is the use of students' photos because you would want a public account so that your book reviews and information reach many users; however, posting photos of students will require some background digging to make sure those posts are allowed with your school district.

Link to my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keepingliteraturelit/

Conclusion

After reviewing these three social media outlets, I will say personally I felt like Instagram would be the most effective because of the ease of use. I feel like a librarian would be apt to use it more regularly. I think Facebook is in a close second with ease of use and the ability to really reach users. Lastly, I would say Twitter is a good source for a librarian themselves in growing in their own professional development and connecting with others in the profession; however, I do not feel like it would be used as much by parents, students, or community members in the way it would benefit the library the best. According to another blog by The Social Institute, after surveying over 10,000 students, Instagram was the top pick for students over 13 years of age. (The Social Institute 2022). This really pushes the ease of use that I mentioned so again, I think Instagram would be the best starting point for a new librarian to bring social media to his/her library.

References:

10 THINGS STUDENTS WISH YOU KNEW ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA. (2022, January 14). [web log]. Retrieved June 10, 2022, from https://thesocialinstitute.com/blog/10-things-students-wish-you-knew-about-social-media/.

Feed Readers - WHAT?

     If you are anything like me, you have probably never heard the word "feed reader." Honestly, I had never heard that term before this month, but what an interesting thing it actually is. This interesting concept allows users to house all the blogs they like to stay informed on in one location, it is like a Pinterest for blogs.

    While searching through multiple feed reader options, it almost became overwhelming. Most started looking the exact same as the one I had just viewed.  However, a few stood out for me to take a second look at.  My first thought when I started looking at them is that they remind me of an email inbox, you can have folders to sort items, and on some of the feed readers, you can star favorites just like you can in an inbox. Honestly, there are so many that are similar but each unique in their own way, so it boils down to a personal preference. Do you want something ordinary, or do you want something a bit more advanced to work with? 

    One of my favorites was the Ionreader one because it didn't look so much like the others. It gave me more of a Pinterest vibe versus an email inbox or playlist vibe. I liked how you could easily change the look of it up. One big benefit I have noticed that could be used in the near future is the ability to create teams to share with. This would be a big help in the schools for the librarian to be able to push out new information quickly. However, just like Ionreader, Good News got my attention for a second look too. Both had unique features, but I ended up liking the ease of use with Good News. From the very beginning, I was able to easily add topics and change up topics that they had suggested for me. I also really like like that Good News allows for so much diversity in the way you want it to look.  As stated on BloggingWizard, it comes with twelve different visual styles (Liedke 2022). This is great for someone like me who likes to change things up often, so when I get bored with one, I can just change the layout and style. Therefore, if you like to change things up I recommend giving Good News a try. 

    While mine is still in the early stages, here are a few screenshots of my setup. Right now I am using the Glamour Magazine layout, I feel like you can see so much this way.  Also here is a link to try Good News yourself https://goodnews.click/ 

References:

Liedke, L. 2022. 6 Best free RSS feed readers 2022 edition: BloggingWizard. https://bloggingwizard.com/free-rss-feed-readers/