For the past year or so, I’ve been making a lot of infographics, mostly for Goal Investor, a website that’s geared towards helping Gen X and Gen Y understand investing better. The site features a really cool tool to help you work out just how much you should be savings for goals like retirement and education, and it also provides lots of education in the form of articles and infographics. That’s the part I’ve been helping with. You can see some of the stuff I’ve been creating here, here and here.
In the Spring, a good friend of mine asked me if I’d be interested in doing a workshop on the use of infographics in education at her school in New Hampshire. She teaches English to high school kids at Pittsfield Middle High School, a school where they’re doing some truly groundbreaking work in rethinking education. In addition to creating very cool hands-on learning opportunities for students and making strides in conflict resolution through their work in restorative justice (which my friend is heavily involved in), a grant has enabled them to offer workshops to teachers and students alike on a variety of topics. Teachers can identify topics and presenters they think would provide useful, cross-disciplinary, project-based workshops, and funding is provided through the grant. Needless to say, when she approached me about this, I jumped at the chance, as it combined two things that I’m passionate about, design and teaching.