Infographic tools are a great resource for teachers and students. Both can use them to capture complex concepts in pictorial form. In this blog entry, let’s explore a new infographic tool.
“Infographics use imagery to highlight, explain, or enhance text-based information” (source).
The Research Connection
First, let’s revisit why infographics are so powerful. As a surface learning strategy, imagery (d=0.51) accelerates student learning. It does this because it combines images (such as graphs, diagrams) with textual information. Infographics can serve K-12 education in many ways. Some of those include:
- Illustrating a historical timeline
- Emphasizing significant statistics
- Focusing on a topic or issue of interest
There are several more ways infographics can work in the classroom. Here’s one example built around writing a research paper:
Infographic Tools
Wondering how to make infographics? You may be reaching for Canva, Google Slides (or MS PowerPoint), or Google Drawings. These are all powerful tools for creating infographics. You may already know about these below from the Infographics Made Simple (IMS) resource I have shared before.
Video Infographic Makers
Infographic Design Tools
- Canva
- Easel.ly
- Google Drawings
- Google Slides
- Infogr.am
- Mind the Graph
- MS Powerpoint
- Piktochart
- Snappa
- Venngage
- Visme
This long list may leave you thinking, “Ok, I can do it all with these.” But wait, there’s one more. With infographics, you can never have too much of a good thing. So here’s another great tool to add to your tool belt: IcoGrams Designer
Does Icograms Have Templates?
Icograms Designer, like other infographic tools, enjoys an abundance of templates. Use these to start with or adapt for your own purposes. If you enjoyed building things in SimCity, then Icograms Designer will bring back fond memories.
How Does the Icograms Designer Work?
To start with, Icograms lacks the infographic design tools like the others. It opens to a plain screen with a big box. Into that box, you can click-and-drag all sorts of icons. You can save your infographic to PNG or JPG image formats without creating an account, which is a big plus.
If you want to save your icogram so you can work on it again, though, you will need an account. Upgrade your Icograms account, and you can save to SVG image format as well. See pricing options.
How Much Does It Cost?
The Basic account, which is free, offers more than 3,050 icons, 390 templates, and lets you save eight designs. It requires attribution and imposes these limits:
- All of the Stock Icons and Icograms Templates remain the property of Icograms.
- You must put a backlink with credits to icograms.com. It can be a part of the image and/or a part of the description.
Also, the IcoGrams license does not allow the following uses:
- The Media may not be used in commercial project;
- The Media may not be sold, sublicensed, rented or transferred;
- The Media may not be modified in shape and/or color;
- Icograms copyright, logo and credits may not be removed, if exist;
- The Media may not be used to create pornographic, libelous, obscene, or defamatory material.
The Pro and Expert licenses are a bit more permissive, but costs (billed annually) range from $14.25 to $25.50. Little or no provision is granted for educator pricing. That said, the Basic level account offers use of non-commercial projects, as indicated below:
The Media can be used by You for any number of personal and/or non-commercial projects including social post, web design, web application, software application, mobile application, documentation, presentation, computer game, gui design, advertisement, illustration, video, school and university projects for You without having to pay additional licensing fees.
This makes it a worthwhile tool for use in K-12 education, as well as university level.
Creating Your IcoGrams Design
Creating an icogram is really a matter of design and time. You will find a variety of icons ready to use. Some of the categories include:
- City Basic
- Sport
- Farm
- Supermarket
- Warehouse
- Logistics
- Construction
This is a wonderful tool that should appeal to students and teachers.
Infographics for Students
The power of icograms is that it allows us to merge images with text and numbers, which is something that students need to practice and learn. What images might students use to convey an idea? What conclusions could they capture in the icogram design? And what learning will they walk away with just from using this simple, powerful tool?
Feature Image Source
Screenshot by author via Icograms