The project
Instead of just doing a prezi.com presentation or a presentation in general I thought it would be a good idea to have the students create infographics about governments. Their unit focused on the different forms of government (democracy, monarchy, etc.). At first when we I met with the teachers to propose this project we had decided the students would just do a simple infographic that would describe on type of government. The students would have worked in pairs and found out statistical information about their selected form of government.
After the first few weeks we decided to take the project in another direction. We talked about their summative assessment for the unit and their third line of inquiry (what is life like in each form of government). We decided that the students should research statistics that related to standard of living in two countries that had different forms of governments. The would look at the following statistics: Population (male/female), Life expectancy (total/male/female), Average years in school (total/male/female), Unemployment (total/male/female), Labor force by occupation, Population below the poverty line, Internet users and Mobile Telephones. They would then have to compare the two countries in their infographics.
The process
- I did an introductory lesson on Infographics and gave the students and opportunity to explore the piktochart.com website.
- We gave the students specific information to search for and directed them to three websites where they could find the information:
- The CIA World Handbook,
- The UN Database
- Countrymaster.com.
- We discussed the expectations with the students for the visual presentations.
- They needed represent their data in a clear and understandable way
- They needed to keep the images and graphics on topic.
- They needed to cite their sources
- When the students had finished collecting their information they began inserting the information into their infographic.
- When the students finished they needed to download their infographic and email it to all the teachers involved and post it to their blogs.
Examples of student work
Assessment
To assess we are using observational notes and a rubric.
Reflection
I really enjoyed this project. The students seemed to enjoy it as well, the process of creating the infographics. I liked how the students were really enthusiastic about their work. When you can create that enthusiasm in the students it is always a great satisfaction. If I would do this project again I would make sure to spend more time working with the students on how to organize and present their information. I would also like to give them time to reflect on their findings. I would ask them which country’s system was better for the people who lived there and to explain why using the data in the infographic as a reference.
