The Infographic Explosion

Infographics have become my favorite online obsession. I post appropriate infographics on my Pinterest page, Facebook page, and Twitter. But how to create your own infographics?

There are several options.

• Hire an infographic designer
• Purchase infographic services from dozens of online websites
• Ignore the infographic explosion altogether (but that didn’t work out too well when you dismissed Facebook, did it?)

Here’s what Visual.ly, an infographic design website, recommends if you’re looking to hire an infographic designer:

“…look for someone who understands the ‘info’ part. Infographics are used to display information in a way that’s easy to understand. Many infographic designers focus on fancy design that actually makes the infographic harder to comprehend.”

It’s also wise to examine how you would use your infographic designer. Visual.ly recommends that you create a “design brief,” which most good designers will expect. It should answer these questions:

• What stories are we trying to tell that can be better told using an infographic?
• When will we use an infographic designer most? Strictly during the budget season? For our annual reports?
• Where will we use the infographics once they’re completed? In print? Online? Both?

Because many of you currently use page designers, it might be wise to ask if they’re able to produce infographics. Ask for samples.

But know, too, that many websites also provide infographic design services, providing a way to take smaller steps toward creating infographics, on a project-by-project basis.

Any number of sites offer these services, and some even provide templates so you can design your own infographics.

Visual.ly This popular site, through its Visual.ly Marketplace, can provide you with infographic designers and even data researchers who will pull together customized infographics based on your needs. If you’re considering this option, be sure to check out their offers for “organizations,” including non-profits. Prices for customized infographics on Visual.ly can start at $1,495 and take at least 18 days to produce.

But Visual.ly also has a limited number of infographic templates you can use. You can import your own information into the template, check out how it looks, and then download the infographic as a PDF or JPEG. You can also use an html code to embed your infographic on your website, or simply link to the URL of your masterpiece. Here’s what I did in just five minutes of tinkering — a look at the“Facebook life” of the White Plains, NY, School District. 

Piktochart: This site provides three membership options, including a very limited free option. But trying out the free option (which will include a Piktochart watermark) can give you a general idea about what it’s like to create an infographic. Their professional option, at $29 a month,  provides you with 100 themes, some customization options, and more than 1,000 graphics and images.

Easel.ly This site provides 15 themes that you can customize with your own information. The site is currently in beta, which means that it can only offer you so much in terms of customization. But if you’re just getting your feet wet, Easel.ly might be a good option.

Don’t forget that you might occasionally want to use a great infographic, created by someone else but available for free use, because it contains fascinating and pertinent information about public education. I post these often on my school district websites, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and especially on Pinterest. As a curator of useful information, consider this (yet another) part of your job.

Related articles

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Marco Rubio Could Be You

Let the Marco Rubio-sipping-a-Poland-Spring moment on national television be a lesson to us all.

No matter what your politics are, it was a surprising moment when the U.S. Senator from Florida first glanced at his water bottle during his Republican response to the State of the Union Address the other night, then bent down on national television to grab the bottle and take a sip, mid-sentence.

Less than a decade ago, we would have seen it and then — poof — it would have been gone.

But today, embarrassing, awkward and even worse moments become sensations. They are repeated, remixed and retweeted, then discussed and dissected by, well, the universe. Just moments after Rubio reached for the water bottle, Twitter exploded with tweets about the awkward moment, the words “watergate” and “Poland Spring” immediately trending. Among my favorite tweets, by the way, was “Zero Dark Thirsty.”

And Twitter was just the beginning. Dozens of Rubio parody videos have been uploaded to YouTube, friends and family members are discussing the incident on Facebook, and the senator’s own political action committee, Reclaim America, is now offering a Marco Rubio water bottle to supporters for $25. It helps to poke fun at yourself.

Along the way, of course, the senator picked up 13,000 new followers on Twitter.

But the Rubio moment and its subsequent virality should be a wakeup call to those of us in the public relations business. Our videotaped school events and Board of Education meetings, superintendents’ speeches, Facebook posts, tweets and transparency are all good things.

But we need to remind ourselves and those who work in our districts that those moments are now etched in time, permanent examples of how we behave and what we say, photograph and write.

The Rubio incident is also a chance for us to remind those we work for how important it is to prepare well for public appearances, press conferences, speeches and presentations. That includes hydrating.

The world is watching. No one wants to end up on David Letterman’s Top Ten List.

Newtown and Social Media

We all feel helpless. And we certainly remember feeling the same way during Columbine, 9/11, Aurora and countless other events in recent memory that took far too many lives in an instant. Today, when people feel helpless, many of us turn to social media. Some to argue and provoke. Others simply to vent and be heard.

Laurie Ruettimann, who writes a blog called The Cynical Girl, posted an item the other day noting that even with its many drawbacks, social media “knits the world together” during a crisis. At the same time, many have noted that social media is little more than a community bulletin board. We post, but we do little.

So I want to take this opportunity to focus on how a number of people have turned to social media after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, to do one thing: make a difference.

• Brian Mauriello, a near-lifetime resident of Newtown, established the Newtown Memorial Fund within hours of the tragedy, creating a website, Facebook page and Twitter feed to accept donations for the purpose of building a memorial playground in honor of the Sandy Hook victims. He has already applied for 501c3 status and has named a board of directors that includes an accountant, an attorney, a member of the police force, a public school teacher and others. Mauriello’s six-year-old son attends a different elementary school in Newtown.
• On Twitter, NBC News correspondent Ann Curry launched #26ActsofKindness, encouraging people to perform acts of kindness in memory of Newtown’s 26 victims, and share what they accomplished on Twitter. The movement has spread, with thousands of people tweeting their acts of kindness. Beth Steinberg, for example, tweeted this: “Just paid the school fees for 26 children with AIDS in Mombasa, Kenya.” And Heather Fournie sent this tweet out: “Just left dinner for two at Applebee’s for a town police officer on his car.”
• The Emilie Parker Fund Facebook page was created by friends of the six-year-old victim’s family to raise money for their expenses through a fund set up with a credit union in Utah, where Emilie was born. Since the page was created on Dec. 14, more than 322,000 fans have joined.
• Ryan Kraft, a former Sandy Hook Elementary School student, turned to crowdrise.com, a popular crowdfunding site, to create a Sandy Hook Elementary School Victims Relief Fund page. Kraft hopes the fund will support the victims, families and all others affected locally by the shooting, and the funds will be donated directly to the school’s PTSA. So far, Ryan has raised $103,170.
• Earlier this week, Colette Connolly of my staff posted a message on my Facebook page about how the Connecticut PTSA is asking people to make paper snowflakes and send them to Newtown. The snowflakes will be used to decorate every corner of Chalk Hill Elementary School, when Sandy Hook students move in there in late January. I posted the information on my page and suggested that our district hold a snowflake-making day. On Monday, Jan. 7, our employees will be dropping in at our Snowflake Central to try their hand at making hundreds of paper snowflakes that will be boxed up and sent to Newtown. And NSPRA colleague Jim Cummings, a Facebook friend, posted that same idea on the Glendale (AZ) Elementary School District Facebook page, where he works. The snowflakes have gone viral.

No doubt, we have all read posts about gun control and revamping the way we treat mental illness in this country. But instead of using social media to simply yell from the rooftops, some people are using it to take concrete, lasting action.

Social Media Portals: Herding Those Social Media Sites Into the Same Corral

At Southern Westchester BOCES, we’re trying out a new product that, since its launch in September, has already received interest from other school districts in our region. It’s called Smashup, and the product places all your social media feeds onto one page where readers can easily follow you and see your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and now even Pinterest.

In addition, at the bottom of the page, you can see a cool iris tool that permits the user to scan through your videos and choose one to watch.

The company that created the tool, AllofE Solutions of Lawrence, Kan., worked with us over the summer to design our Smashup page and combined RSS feeds from our social media sites to build the page. We worked closely with the company on the design to ensure that it would look like our website pages, even though it’s not really a part of our website at all.

I was also trained on how to use the Smashup back-end tool, which permits me to make changes to individual modules, change font styles and even change the feeds themselves. I’m also able to rotate our featured social media feed, giving our member school districts a chance to be featured regularly. Currently, the White Plains City School District’s Facebook page is in the featured spot.

Having access to the tool is your choice, and some of you may prefer to simply permit the company to maintain and monitor the site. If you’re lucky enough to have a webmaster with html coding experience, then you might consider building your own social media portal page.

Blended social media portals are growing in popularity among K-12 school districts, but are particularly being used now by colleges and universities, many of which have grown their social media stable to dozens and even hundreds sites that can be corralled onto one page for easier access. Here are a few you can check out:

All Harvard Social Media

Kent State University Social Media Portal

Connect with The New School

Connect with Stevens-Henager College

Cincinnati Public Schools’ I Am CPS Page

Northfield Mount Hermon Independent School’s NMH Book

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Learnist Grows as a Pinterest for Educators

I discovered Learnist recently, and since joining, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed puttering through it and learning from educators who are using the site with a vengeance.

Learnist works like Pinterest, and is another way to curate and catalog online resources on a variety of topics and share them with your social network. It looks like a virtual bulletin board with visual links, much like Pinterest, and it connects to your Facebook account. In fact, Facebook membership is required to use Learnist.

Currently in closed beta form, Learnist is primarily being used by teachers, college professors and other educators. These same users might be turned off by Pinterest’s wider variety of users and topics.

You’ll find boards on Learnist that include mythology, literature, the Common Core standards, the Pythagorean theorem, flipped classrooms and more.

Students also can create study boards on Learnist, and their boards will be seen by friends of their Facebook pages.

If you apply to become a member, know in advance that Learnist will take its time vetting your online activities and inviting you. I waited about a month to receive my invitation. But so far, it was worth the wait.

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A Teaching Moment: Karen Klein and Social Media

Karen Klein (bullied bus monitor) and Max Sidorov (indiegogo campaign creator) on CBC (Photo credit: k-ideas)

Karen Klein, better known as the bullied bus monitor whose abuse unfolded on YouTube and other social media sites back in June, reminded me a bit of my own late grandmother. Somewhat forgotten by society in her later years, navigating a world that was moving way too fast, and unable to defend herself with any ferocity.

“If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” was the best she could muster when a group of students from Greece Athena Middle School in upstate New York pummeled her with epithets, poked and prodded her, and even made a veiled reference to what must have been the greatest tragedy of her life – the suicide 10 years ago of her son.

The Karen Klein incident also once again focused a 10-times magnification mirror on the wide spectrum of human behavior that exists out there. And it reinforced what we already know in the 21^st century – that social media has become the lens through which we often see ourselves and others.

“This is a glance into the heart of darkness of the human spirit,” said Syracuse University media professor Robert Thompson in an article published in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle in the weeks following the incident. “But it’s not a serial killer, it’s our own kids.”

As if bullying Ms. Klein wasn’t enough, one of the students on the bus that day shot a YouTube video  of the incident, titled, “Making the Bus Monitor Cry.” That’s where social media stepped in, and when a hard-to-watch bullying incident that would never have come to light in another decade spiraled into a phenomenon.

Everyone loves an underdog, in this case Ms. Klein, so an incensed 25-year-old Max Sidorov posted a link to the video on Reddit, a popular social networking site, announcing that he’d created an account on Ms. Klein’s behalf at indiegogo.com, a “crowdfunding” website.

Once the link was posted on Reddit, the YouTube video went from getting a few thousand hits to 8 million hits, in little more than a week.

Sidorov’s fundraiser, called “Let’s Give Karen H. Klein a Vacation,” set a goal of $5,000, but much to his surprise, donations far beyond that goal poured in. More than $703,000 was donated to the 68-year-old grandmother, who earned $15,000 a year as a monitor. About 32,000 people from all 50 states and 25 different countries donated to the cause, the vast majority with $10 and $25 donations. Mrs. Klein has since announced her retirement.

Sidorov, who is now trying to raise money to help the victims of flooding in Russia, recently quoted Anne Frank in a post on his Facebook page: “No one has ever become poor by giving.”

While it can be argued that the funds contributed to Ms. Klein could have been used to help bullied young people (those arguments were raging for a while online), the fact is, that’s not how the events unfolded here. What did happen was a series of incidents that trained an important lens, through social media, on the issue of school bullies.

That can’t be all bad.

YouTube for Schools: A Good Bet for the Future?

You might remember a time when YouTube was, like its friend Facebook, the bad kid in the schoolyard. Those days might just be over for the video-sharing website once best known for documenting fistfights and piano-playing cats.

In March, The New York Times published a story about Google’s new tool, YouTube for Schools. Thought you’d never hear the words “YouTube” and “schools” together in the same sentence? Largely because of the support of tech-savvy teachers, YouTube has introduced a new tool that permits school districts to use a “gated” version of the website. With it, teachers and administrators are able to view all videos on YouTube, but students can’t log in, at least not in school. Still, the tool allows them to watch YouTube EDU videos like Khan Academy, PBS, TED Talks and Steven Spangler Science, along with videos posted by their school district.

This is a major step forward for YouTube. The site has gradually transformed its reputation by introducing YouTube EDU several years ago in a partnership with the country’s major universities, then by working closely with the fabulous Khan Academy to make its videos accessible to the world. Already, a number of school districts around the country have signed up YouTube for Schools, including the Chicago Public Schools.

Go to YouTube for Schools to learn more about signing up. To view some of the YouTube channels your teachers are just dying to use in the classroom, check out Khan Academy, Steve Spangler Science, PBS, Stanford University or TED Talks. You’ll find it hard to step away from the computer. Then advocate on behalf of your teachers, if necessary.

YouTube for Teachers is another useful resource, which includes hundreds of video playlists, organized by subject and grade, with many aligned to common core standards.

Here’s a video explanation of YouTube for Schools:

Using Issuu to ‘Animate’ Your Publications

My staff at Southern Westchester BOCES and I discovered Issuu several years ago, and we have been using this tool for the districts we represent to “animate” their publications ever since.

issuu (Photo credit: ThemaTisch)

The reason? School district websites are already cluttered with PDF documents, forcing our readers to download documents to their computer hard drives and often to print them out. Why force readers to take those extra steps?

For most newsletters, annual reports, calendars and even Powerpoint presentations, we now provide our readers with two choices: to read the “animated” Issuu version of a document, or to download a PDF.

If they choose the Issuu version, your viewers will see a document with pages that can be turned as they’re read and tools that allow them to zoom in and out while reading.

Here’s how to use Issuu:

• Create a free account for your district on Issuu.
• When you’ve completed a newsletter or other document and have a PDF version, sign on to Issuu and look for the “upload” button.
• Upload your PDF (it will take a few minutes to load).
• Once you’ve successfully uploaded your document, it will appear on a virtual bookshelf in your Issuu “library.”
• Cllick on the “open” button and your document will open for you.
• Once that document is open, you’ll see a series of icons at the bottom.
• Click on the < > icon, and you will see a long html embed code. Copy that.
• Paste the html code on the district website page where you’d like your publication to appear, and you’re done.

To see Issuu in action, check out the White Plains Public Schools Issuu site. To view how it works on a school website, check out how we used it to display our annual SWBOCES Services Guide.

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Build a LinkedIn Company Page for Your School District

LinkedIn, the professional social network, rather quietly last year began adding some Image via CrunchBase pretty cool enhancements to its site that public relations professionals should know about. As you may or may not know, LinkedIn now has more than 90 million members hailing from more than 200 different countries. Unlike Facebook and many other social networking sites, 33 percent of LinkedIn users have graduate degrees (compared to about 21 percent of all Internet users). In addition, most users of LinkedIn range in age from 35 to 55, and more than 100,000 members of LinkedIn are professional recruiters. One of the most recent enhancements is company pages, and that’s where you come in.   Because thousands of companies and non-profits are already listed on LinkedIn with a “company page” generated by LinkedIn anyway, it’s wise to take advantage of the opportunity and build a page about your school district that’s accurate, lists your services and achievements, lists your job openings, and builds a community around your schools. To add a company page, click on the “Companies” tab at the top of your profile page. When the page comes up, you’ll see an “Add a Company” button on the top right of your page. Click on that.   To add a page about your company, you must have a company email address with your company’s email domain (name@yourcompany.com). Email addresses at gmail, yahoo, etc., won’t work. In addition, don’t forget to check and see if your district already has a company page. Follow these steps:   Enter your district’s official name and your work email address. Click “Continue” and enter your district’s information. Try adding your mission statement or a brief description about your district. If your page already has an administrator, the “Overview” tab will show this message: “To edit company pages please contact an admin. See admin list.” Clicking on “See admin list” will show your administrator. In most cases, you won’t see an administrator, so now is the time to name yourself as the administrator (after checking, of course, with your superintendent). Once you’ve created your company page, something cool will happen. LinkedIn members who specified their workplace when they signed up — and most do —  will automatically show up on your district’s company page. LinkedIn will also populate your page with former employees, alumni and new hires. To edit the information on your company page, click on “Admin tools” in the upper right of the page and select “Edit.” Make your changes and the click “Publish” to save.   In the right hand column of your company page, you’ll also see that once you’ve entered your district’s main address, phone number and website, LinkedIn will automatically add a Google Map to the page.   To ensure that only certain people can make changes to your page, be sure to go to the Overview page. Once there, you’ll see “Company Pages Admins.” Click on “designated users only,” and click on the “Publish” button. You can also add the names of other administrators if you’d like others in your office to have access to page changes.   As you become more familiar with your company page, you might try embedding YouTube videos on your overview page, linking your page to your district’s Twitter feeds, and elaborating on your district under the “Products and Services” tab, where you can also add photos.   To add your district’s Twitter account, visit “Edit My Profile” and click “Add Twitter account” next to the Twitter field. Twitter will ask you to verify your account name and password. Once your accounts are joined, you can change this setting at any time.   To learn more about LinkedIn company pages, go to the LinkedIn Learning Center. In addition, Mashable has a comprehensive how-to about company pages.

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The Future of Social Media Maintenance?

If you’re like me, you probably look forward to school calendar season as much as you look forward to your next dentist appointment.

I can remember nearly losing my sanity during a few school calendar seasons, sorting through hundreds of pieces of paper (including handwritten notes) containing competing events and dates.

And now, many of us have social media responsibilities added to our long list of tasks. What’s a school communicator to do?

There might be help on the way. In my web travels, I stumbled across some pretty interesting web-based problem-solvers. I am in no way endorsing these products; I’m just noting a possible trend here.

Tandem for Schools, for example, is a web-based calendar service now available to schools. Using Tandem, school administrators can contribute to and update a central calendar, thereby sidestepping competing events, eliminating all that paper, and permitting the person who compiles your print calendar to retain his or her grip on reality. And perhaps, if your district is ready for this, Tandem might eventually make the print calendar obsolete.

Tandem connects school districts with parents in multiple ways, centered around a sophisticated-looking system. The web-based calendar, set up by a school district (or by individual schools, PTAs, education foundations, sports booster organizations, etc.), can sync with users’ Outlook, iCal, Google Calendar, Windows Live and other calendar systems.

The service also provides iPhone and smartphone integration so that Tandem can send emails and text message alerts to parents. Messages can be filtered by parents along the lines of their interests — for example, some parents might only want alerts about sports events; others might want to know about everything on the calendar.

Tandem also integrates with the district website by allowing you to re-direct the calendar button or the link you use to your district or school Tandem URL, and users will land right on the calendar. The calendar also can be customized to your school or district colors and logo.  And it includes directions to every event you post on the district calendar, with the help of Google Maps. You can also post individual events from the Tandem calendar directly onto Twitter and Facebook, and the calendar can be embedded onto your district’s Facebook page.

The best way to understand how Tandem works is to watch the company video.

Although Tandem hasn’t published any rates that I can find, you can see what the company offers in two different pricing levels — basic (free version) and enterprise — here. You can also sign up for a demo or watch a Tandem webinar before deciding your next course of action.

Squareberry promotes itself as an automated social media tool that helps social media managers with scheduling news and posts, tracking feedback and impressions, and centralizing and automating your social media work, saving time and angst. The Squareberry tool integrates your Facebook page, your Twitter feed, and your LinkedIn page, and it lets you post to all at the same time. For those of you without a Facebook fan page, Squareberry will build one for you.

Squareberry also allows you to use a full web-based calendar as your central events tool, and will post those events on all your social media sites. Postings can be scheduled way in advance, and that will undoubtedly save you oodles of time. In addition, the tool includes in-depth integration with mobile devices.

The free version of Squareberry (for schools and non-profits) is somewhat limited and doesn’t include the Facebook fan page creation. You’re limited to 100 events per month and three social media accounts. The pro version, at $29 per month, offers unlimited events, unlimited web calendars, and five social media accounts.

To better understand how Squareberry works, take a look at their video overview.

If any of our readers have tried out these tools, please feel free to share your experience with the rest of us in the comments section of this blog.

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