Infographics

The third grades in both my buildings are studying Native Americans as part of their Social Studies unit. I am a firm believer in integrating curriculum and always do a weeks long unit with the third grades on Native American art. One of the areas we focus on is the Southwestern United States. For my third Tech Tac Toe project, I chose Piktochart. I didn’t know anything about this Infographic site before I started. It was an interesting experience for me because a very long time ago, before I was a teacher, I was a graphic designer. When I was in college, there wasn’t a computer to be found anywhere in our buildng. As future graphic designers, we learned to do everything by hand from scratch. We manipulated shapes and cut and paste type to produce our poster designs, book layouts and logo designs. My how things have changed. I don’t mean to sound like I didn’t know these sites weren’t out there, I just never used them before. For my sample, I am showing the landscape of the Southwestern United States where the Native Americans lived. I am also showing some of the flora and fauna from the area as well as images of weaving, sand painting, cliff dwellings and Kachinas. For what I did for this poster, I would say it was pretty easy. I would need to play with it a bit more to see how easy it would be to come up with my own layout for the poster instead of using one of their ready made ones. For my art room, it would be another visual to have up on my screen and I don’t think it really would be part of my student instruction. I would prefer to take the photos and use them in a running slide show with Native American flute music playing while the students are working. I have actual weavings, sand paintings and Kachinas in my classroom for the students to touch and look at. These are displayed for the duration of the unit.