When I taught high school English, I asked my students to write a full essay on a persuasive, current topic of their choice. We’d review it, critique it and edit it. Eventually, when they thought it was final, I’d ask them to transform it into an actual letter to the editor. They were required to choose a local paper of their choice, find the word count required, and cut their words to meet the requirement. They moaned. They groaned. They became concise writers.
When you are challenged to state your argument in fewer words or in another medium, you force your brain to think creatively and critically. You cannot afford to waste space on words without impact.
Infographics are a great way of setting up this challenge. An infographic must state an argument in words, pictures, and engaging design. When creating an infographic, you are challenged to meet your audience’s needs. This is not to say there is no purpose for a full essay. But, there is something to be said for writing in multimedia.
To show that point, I’ve transformed by Infographics presentation of my favorite resources into an infographic! I used Piktochart to create the infographic, but Canva to create many of the presentation slides.
Recently, I transformed a standard thesis writing assignment into an infographic. Students were challenged to write a simple thesis statement and support it with three pieces of evidence, with each piece of evidence written with contextual notes. Essentially, students wrote a small paper, but without the hype. As a teacher, I was able to dissect elements of their writing to offer better help going forward. Check out the assignment here.
Check out fennovation.org for more writing tips (fennovation.org soon to move under fennestudio.com). Enjoy!
FenneStudio 