Lesson: Creating Infographics for Earth Day

EducationWorld is pleased to present this lesson contributed by Colin Hussey of Serif. For more information about Serif’s award-winning range of software for use in your classroom, please visit Serif.com/education.

With Earth Day just around the corner, why not launch your own ‘Save Our Animals’ project? Start a hypothetical wildlife campaign and ask your class to create infographics about endangered animals to promote greater environmental awareness.

As part of this campaign, grade 7-12 students can use graphic design software to create colorful, interesting and informative infographics that can be placed in parks, schools and communities to draw attention to the environmental issues that are threatening the lives of certain animals.

Objectives

Students will:

• Learn how to communicate a message through infographics.
• Teach students about endangered species and help them understand what causes some animals to become extinct.
• Explore creativity and multimedia skills.
• Learn the basics of using vector graphics and design software.

Introduction: What are infographics?

Infographics are graphic representations of information, data or knowledge. They are great for presenting complex information quickly and clearly and are fast becoming an essential communication tool.

As a method of communication, infographics are effective and appeal to a decreasing attention span, getting the message across quickly and in an attractive way. We live in a busy world, where people don’t always have time to read pages of text in order to find needed information. In addition, lines and lines of text will never engage readers the way that an image does. That is why inforgraphics are great promotional tools for wildlife campaigns--sadly, it seems that gaining the public’s attention about this very serious matter calls for more creative approaches.

Lessons

Before your students can create the infographics, they will need to develop a better understanding of the threat to endangered species, particularly the problems, causes, possible solutions and potentially disastrous effects to humanity if these species were to die off.

Firstly, hold an open discussion with your class to find out what they already know about endangered species. Ask questions like: What are the three basic things living species need to survive? Why do you think species are endangered? What animals and plants do you know that are endangered or extinct? How do you think this ongoing global problem can be improved? Why should we protect endangered species?

Next, get each student to choose an endangered species they would like to help. Get them to do some general research on their chosen animal, including basic information about the species, important facts and statistics about its status, and recommendations on ways to get the world’s attention about this dying species.

Once they’ve carried out their research, get them to think about how they’d like to present this information to their target audience. Since infographics are often used as promotional tools, encourage your students to approach their project by thinking about what will be the most interesting, persuasive, enlightening and effective way to reveal their endangered species to the public.

Because the topic of endangered species is essentially about life and death, they may want their infographics to include eye-opening statistics and other related scientific data that will grab their audience’s attention. Get them to look at the way other infographics are put together--there is plenty of inspiration on the Web. They can start by taking a look at this Pinterest board by Visual Loop. If it helps, get them to hand-draw a rough sketch of what they want their final document to look like.

The production of the infographic may take several lessons, so make sure you give your class enough time to complete this part of their assignment. You might want to hold one or two sessions to let the class familiarize themselves with the software. Some, like Serifs DrawPlus, have a wizard that can guide students through the initial stages of design. There are also lots of useful help sheets and video tutorials on the Web site.

DrawPlus provides the perfect platform for pupils to use pictures and create high-quality infographics. Pupils new to vector drawing can create intricate designs, with new arc, spiral and triangle tools to quickly draw unique shapes to form more complex designs. They can also experiment with artistic media and stencils by painting over preset stencils or creating original stencils from scratch.

Creating a balanced color scheme throughout their infographic is also easy, thanks to the program’s ability to generate a palette of colors from any image. Plus they create composite images by applying high-end effects to photos with the program’s in-built photo-editing tools. Once they’re finished, students can export their document as a PDF for professional printing or sharing online.

Assessment

Students’ grades should be based on their ability to:

• Present accurate information and understand the subject matter.
• Find, select and organize relevant information.
• Understand the underlying basics of design.
• Match the content and language to their intended audience.

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