Interactive infographics bring data to life

Keywords: multimedia, infographics, timeline, poll, maps, interactive

One of the benefits of online newspapers is the potential for interactive infographics. My students have used infographic generators like Piktochart, Easel.ly andCanva, but we haven't experimented as much with other tools. This week, I tried out three new-to-me tools to see how they might work alongside those we already have: customizedGoogle maps, Polldaddy polls and surveys and Tiki-Toki timelines.

Custom Maps

I use Google maps frequently and knew it was possible to create a customized map, but I hadn't played with creating one with multiple points myself. For the purposes of this experiment, I decided to map the 11 First Amendment Press Freedom Award winners for 2018. This tool requires a Google login, but since our school is a Google school, that was easy. I used the step-by-step process laid out at create.net to add each school to the map. My final map is below. This is a great tool for adding visual geographic data to a news story and pretty easy once I got the hang of it. It's also free — a big bonus.

Polls and Surveys

My next experiment was with Polldaddy. Because we are a Google school, my staff has tended to use Google forms or one of the WordPress SNO plugins to conduct surveys. I had heard of Polldaddy, but I had never used it myself.

I had to sign up for a free account, and then I was ready to create a poll. I started by checking out their explanation of the difference between a poll and a survey (complete with video), and decided to keep it simple this time: just a single, multiple-choice question poll. Polldaddy has a great support blog that walked me through how to create a poll, and the steps were simple to follow. Following the theme of student press freedom, I created the poll to the right. It's a good tool, but since we have polls built into our SNO site, I don't know how useful it will be for my students' online paper.

Timelines

The final tool I took a look at this week was the most interesting and the least intuitive. It was also the most expensive. Although Tiki-Toki does have a free account option, it only allows one timeline and would not allow me to upload my own images within it. I ended up shifting to the $7.99/month account for the purposes of this experiment, which gave me a lot more flexibility in creating the timeline. 

This video gives a basic overview of how to create and modify timelines, but it took me a bit of time to get the hang of it. I ended up creating a timeline for the upcoming National High School Journalism Convention in San Francisco. I used photos from past conventions to give students a sense of what the experience is like. If I had more time, I would love to experiment with audio and video clips as well. I think this could be a great tool for news stories that develop over time, though I would have to look into the cost of a class license to see if it's financially viable.