Learning How to Visualize Data

As I've gone through the past 8 weeks of school(work) and school(college) I realize there are several ways to demonstrate ones knowledge on a concept.  Often times I find myself creatig lists or diagrams to help me understand a topic.  As I observe my students as they independantly read and research they too often make charts, diagrams, pictures or lists to help them see the information they are reading.  Recently I introduced my students to a program called Piktochart.  They LOVED it!  They had to complete research on a country of their choice and then put it into a poster format to display in school.  Here are a couple of examples of their work.

Having the skill of knowing how to organize images, data, and text on something such as these posters takes time to develop.  Some of my students have had this experience where as others have not.  It took several days to complete just the poster portion after their research was completed. This was mainly because I was introducing them to different concepts of what makes something more memorable and pleasing to the eye where at the same time introducing information to the reader that they did not know before hand.  Teaching students ways to visualize data is highly important since the jobs these students will have in the future depend on presenting information and sharing ideas.  My goal is to try to introduce a different visualization technique a few times this year to give students other options to showcase their knowledge.