November Session

November's Medley

Dr. Crystal Carlson (Psychology) opened the session with a description of how she is using infographics in her psychology classes.  She began by defining infographics as a pictorial representation of information or an idea and dated the first use of them back to the drawings of ancient cavemen.  In today's online world infographics are in wide use and are especially effective as a means of demonstrating data or statistics.  

 Carlson requires her students to employ infographics in their e-portfolios which she says helps them to" represent something complex in an engaging way" and  to "simplify," consolidating their research into a central theme or thesis. As her students work with infographics they begin to understand how they can be effectively used in many domains and not just to illustrate data or statistics. 

There are many free infographics sites which enable users to either start from a template or entirely from scratch. Carlson recommended several including: 

• easel.ly
• Piktochart
• infogr.am 

See Wikipedia's treatment of infographics



In the second half of the session Jason Spartz (Instructional Technology) provided an introduction to some of the latest developments in the area of active learning environments. Dr. Kristen Sellke and Dr. Janel Schultz (Mathematics), Dr. Dorothy Diehl (Languages), Dr. Scott Sorvaag (Education), and Dr. Crystal Carlson (Psychology) described the technological changes made to their classrooms and how these changes have impacted  teaching and learning.  Movable furniture and access to multiple monitors have greatly enhanced group work.  Write everywhere walls serve to " make thinking visible," one of the math professors explained, and the adding of network connections and charging stations to traditional electrical sockets has enabled easy use of technologies. 

Missed the session?  View it here on Tegrity.