Blog Post #4- Visualizing Understanding!

Hey! It’s been a while! For my next blog post, I created a visualization around the planets and dwarf planets in our solar system. This fits in with our study of Earth and Space because we are focusing on what planets are present in our solar system. This would be a great introduction to the planets and dwarf planets and will leave the students wondering if they agree that Pluto should be a dwarf planet or a full-sized planet. The inquiry this piece will unveil will be awesome!

For my visualization piece, I chose to create an infographic based on the readings regarding the process and meaning behind doing them. It fits really well in science content and I really enjoyed what previous 545 students have done with theirs. I feel that science can sometimes be so deep and heavy so doing an assignment that allows students to bring in visuals will have a lot more meaning when it comes to their learning.  I also thought this would work really well with my students and wanted to test out the process prior to having them use it as a choice platform for one of their projects. For the images, I spent a lot of time choosing a variety that would really show the idea behind the 8 planets and 5 dwarf planets. I focused on the idea that Pluto was downgraded and built my ideas around this. I also decided to stick to a few websites that had really good images, graphs, and charts so that it was a pretty uniform infographic. Piktochart was the website that I chose to use. Not only was the site easily accessible, but the tools and menus were very easy to use. You can find my infographic here: What Happened to the 9th Planet?

This visualization really deepened my understanding of the topic because I was able to visualize something that we cannot physically touch- space! There are many areas in science that would benefit from an infographic. It allowed me to represent everything with some sort of visual, map, or graph that enhanced each piece of information. The idea that pieces of information are very limited on the graphic also makes it easier because I had to cut down on wording to get the correct idea across. Adding videos also really helped because it takes students away from just staring at a picture.

I really enjoyed creating a visualization because it challenged me to try and use multiple sources for information, pictures, and videos. The process of creating it was not too difficult. Once I understood how Piktochart worked, I was able to move things and add things pretty easily. I really think this would be a great tool for my classroom because students can easily represent different information related to science content. It would also work really well to display different charts and graphs that we use to record information. I like how the different templates break down the ideas into categories which will make it easier for students who need more support when it comes to designing this. I have a space unit coming up in spring and I am thinking about bringing this visual in and using it as a model for some sort of project or problem based learning. With my space unit, I can have the students collaborate and work together on a mission to Mars infographic. They can find data and pictures to represent all of the recent discoveries and materials that have been created to support a mission to Mars. I definitely cannot wait to try out Infographics in my science classroom!