Will Richardson Ted Talk

We watched a Ted talk about making the learning process different and better. Although I love and try to use some of the ideas he speaks about in my everyday life. I have an ipad, in fact I'm on it right now. I can use the ipad to teach me everything my teachers are supposed to and way more. I utilize the opportunities given to me in order to help me be more successful in learning and life. The learning system that I am deeply engulfed in is troubled. The American learning system is failing many children. We need to adapt to the resources students have and the WAY STUDENTS LEARN. We have fast paced classes and slow paced classes but we need to add creativity into the learning process. Change will be hard change can take a long time. It needs to happen but I don't think it will, at least in my generation it won't. But that's not going to stop me from using it to help advance my sucess as a person.

Read More

Styles of infographics.

So I haven't been on here as much this month because I have been really trying to boost the progress and group moral of my group blog but I have been working on a little series of posts where I  compare some popular styles of infographics. I have no idea how long I am going to do this or how many posts it will be because whenever I give myself any kind of guidelines like that I end up getting bored and or frustrated trying to live up to the expectations I have set for myself.

Ok so the first section is the advertisement. This is an infographic that is used to promote a company or topic. I posted a while ago about the PF Changs one which I really liked but there are so many more. I don't think using infographics as ads is a bad thing. I like how it incorporates more facts and statistics than a normal advertisement.

Some of these came out pretty badly in the save/insert process but you can see them all in their full glory on coolinfographics.com

Examples:

Hotels.com

Project Prediction

Sony Walkman

Read More

Boston Explosion Infographic

Here are some infographics I found about the Bombings in Boston. They help visualize what happened and put it into some perspective. Some of them are kind of small but I tried to get the best quality/biggest version.

This one is my favorite its actually a gif. If you check out the website I linked you can see it in its full glory. 

Read More

The importance of social media during a tragedy.

The idea for this post has come to my mind too many times recently. I'm not sure if this era has caused more tragedies or if it is publicising them more but modern journalism seems to rely heavily on tragic events. One of my teachers was talking about some information she had learned from a seminar on how to act during a school shooting. She said that we should stay off all social media and resist posting what is going on to twitter and to not try to contact any of your loved ones in order to keep the phone lines clear. And I agree with that...to a point. I agree that it probably smarter to resist calling people/the police in order to keep the radio towers clear. But if you have taken a picture or feel your life is in danger or have vital information regarding the incident I believe it is important to post it or share it somewhere. It is always important to stay safe and protect yourself before using social media. Social media connects us and allows people to share their vantage points on whatever they are doing and this is never more important than when people are killed or are in immediate danger. The internet holds so much information that could be really important to the officials trying to solve this crime. I believe that using social media to share info about a tragedy is a good thing

Read More

Post Winning Entries

I am going to post some of the sample winning entries from the competition website. There are some really good ones in here. I don't know what to expect when I get there but If its anything like this I will definitely need to step up my skills a bit before the competition. My main goal is not to win it is to gain new experiences and try to create something I actually enjoy.

Year 2011-2012

This one is my favorite I really enjoy the little characters and how professional it looks. 

Year 2010-2011

I like the simple and straight forward approach in this infographic. I feel like I might be able to make something similar to this one. 

Year 2009-2010

This one is rather busy but I really like the theme and layout of the information.

Read More

Making infographics.

Yesterday I made an infographic following the guidelines of the practice prompt for the journalism competition. But as I went to save it I messed something up and it deleted. I still wanted to document the progress I have made so I drew a very rough sketch of what I had made. I created this infographic on ease.ly and in order to make it more like the actual competition I didn't use any of the premade items and themes. 

Read More

Family Project: Farrell

Exhibit offers insight into African American WWII Sailors

My great-grandpa Farrell was a captain of the U.S.S. Mason during World War II. His ship was one of the very first with a predominately black crew. I am going to focus some of my family project on him. The article I linked describes the ship rather well. There was also a book and movie made on the ship. I will be tying these aspects into forms of modern journalism. I decided this would be a good way to start because it is journalism.

Read More

Pandora vs. Spotify

I posted some time ago about how pandora a algorithms are cool/scary. I found this infographic pretty eye opening on how many more songs/people are on it. This infographic kind of makes me want to try out spotify as well. It's pretty cool how this kind of comparison can make you want to do one thing more than another. This kind of infographic is popular with some other products but it would be really cool to just be able to look at an infographic where you can really easily compare something you want to buy.

Read More

The Mobile Phone Turns 40

Happy Birthday Mobile Phones
Today arguably the most valuable aspect of modern journalism and communication. Mobile devices are such an important part of my studies. Without them I doubt life would be the same.

Read More

Family Project Update

Yesterday was Easter and I used it as an opportunity to advance my project. Honestly, the most interesting person in my family is my grandfather on my dads side. He is currently in the early stages of dementia so I try to get stories from my dad and his siblings. His belongings are a great way for me to get a window into his life.  One of the most noticeable characteristics are the giant book cases filled with books. There are bookcases filling a huge hallway that couldn't fit another book if they tried. That is just the tip of the iceberg; there is a room, a former office, with walls completely covered in books. It would be cool to check out all of books he has up there but there are piles, no mountains, of books all over the floor. Walking around the house you might miss the rest of the books he has because they are in a number of smaller bookcases throughout the house but don't fret, there are tons. On Sunday when I was at his house I took pictures of a few of the main hallways bookcases.

I am probably going to use this with my family project. I have started an infographic on my family and it will be done soon.

Read More

Google Trends: Infographics

I was on Cool Infographics and I saw that they had embedded the graph from google trends. It is really cool how much the interest has gone up in the past two years. I believe that the interest will continue to grow in the future and more advancements will be made in the field. I'm pretty excited to see things like this and how infographics will advance in the future.

Google Trends

Read More

Infographics Used In Marketing

So I know this infographic has nothing to do with my line of study but I really like when companies use infographics in this way.  The pictures are really pretty and it makes me want to go to PF Changs; I've never been but if the food looks half as good as it is in this infographic I'd be happy. This is a really good way of getting people to go to a restaurant. I think things like this would be great for more companies as a way to use infographics as a marketing technique.

Read More