Does Social Media Improve Education? by Jeff Piontek

In a new paper written by Darrell M. West, the Vice President and Director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, How Blogs, Social Media, and Video Games Improve Education, looks at the effect of collaboration on education when students can use tools such as wikis, blogs, social media, and video games.

The author, Darrell West, cites Alan Daly of the University of California at San Diego who believes that education “is moving away from large-scale prescriptive approaches to more individualized, tailored, differentiated approaches.”

In considering the effect of social media on education West asks a series of questions:

• How do these technologies affect students, teachers, parents, and administrators?
• Do they enable new approaches to learning and help students master substantive information?
• In what ways have schools incorporated electronic communications in the learning process and messages to external audiences?

Blogs

Blogs represent a rapidly growing medium that encourages students and teachers to participate in their education. Currently, Nielsen estimates that there are over 156 million blogs on the Internet. Blogs are one of the most prevalent and accessible modes of communication. Many people feel that blogs have democratized the flow of information. They are also used in the classroom as a way for students to collaborate and communicate with other schools.

Unfortunately, there are still a number of schools that do not encourage two-way communications, students collaboration, or global networking within the school. Alan November of November Learning suggests that students need to be globally empathetic to become a global citizen.

There are a number of blogs that deal with the skills of education so teachers and administrators can work with their colleagues and share ideas on finance, assessment, standards and many other topics.

Wikis

A Wiki is a website in which a variety of people can participate and collaborate on constructing the material of the site. Once somebody has started the site other people can edit and make additions. The interactions are a type of collaboration called “crowd-sourcing” which is a term created by Jeff Howe of Wired Magazine.  Wikis have been created by both corporations and schools to help develop creative ideas and design.

Social Media and Mobile Devices

Social media basically includes anything that allows people to communicate in discrete groups over collective interests. People have the opportunity to express themselves and react to what other people have said and have people respond to what they have written. It allows for a variety of people from all over the country and other countries to share ideas and share information. The Pew Internet and American Life Project survey reports that Facebook is a major source of discussion. Twenty two percent of its users comment daily on somebody else’s post.

There are many K-12 schools and colleges that utilize social media to extend the classroom walls. Education becomes 24/7. In some situations the social media is open to people from other countries and a wider set of comments and opinions are expressed. The knowledge of the community becomes vital.

Video Games

Video games are one of the largest consumer items in the commercial world. They are one of the most popular forms of mass entertainment. They bring in hover billion-dollars a year. The Pew Internet and American Life Project survey of American teenagers revealed the eight most popular game genres:

For example, in the game, World of Warcraft, there are some 12 million users who have logged over 50 billion hours playing the game.

Many video games are made for both the entertainment and the education world. There are many skills and concepts that can become clearer through the game medium. Games have been used in the education areas of geography, science, mathematics, English, and logic. According to the scientists at the National Research Council, games “enable learners to see and interact with representations of natural phenomena that would otherwise be impossible to observe – a process that helps them to formulate scientifically correct explanations of these phenomena.”

Conclusion

The authors conclude: “Digital tools represent new ways for participation, engagement, and collaboration to take place. Through digital communications, students, teachers, parents, and administrators can share insights and reactions and develop a better understanding of instructional activities.”

Former Chancellor to Begin Tech Venture

This is a reprint of an article from the NY Times.

Use Of Smartphones And Tablets In The Classroom: [Infographic] Jeff Piontek wants to know what you think

Undoubtedly, everyone understands the importance of projectors and  PowerPoint presentation in the classrooms, but this time, all these stuffs seem little obsolete. As the modern technology advances, the format of classrooms are also changing. A survey conducted by Australian-based online course company “Open Colleges” has reported the top three reasons why teachers are relying on mobile technology; first, due to diverse learning style, second, boost students motivation and thirdly, enhanced material being taught.

In the U.S., 91% of teachers have computer in the classrooms and astoundingly, 1 in 5 teachers accepted that the classroom have right level of technology. In addition to these, 81% of teachers showed off their interest in enrich Tablet classroom learning, while 86% of students (during survey) said that learning on Tablet is quite effective.

1 in 5 students are using mobile apps to organize their course book, while 59% of students are more likely to use their own mobile devices to enhance learning. Almost one-third of all colleges in the U.S. are offering at least online courses; online enrollment saw 21% year-over-year growth, while on other hand, overall higher education growth in the country is just 2%.

Moreover, integration of social networking sites also plays crucial role in education. 4 out of 10 students believe that ‘integration of social networks in the classrooms’ would benefit their education.

See the infographic for further information:

Practice versus theory: Is teacher education headed for a revolution? | Jeff Piontek wants to know

Should colleges that train teachers focus on educational theory, instructing future educators in how children develop and how the brain learns? Or should they focus on the more practical skills teachers need to run classrooms and teach children algebra? Is it possible for training programs to do both well?

The Impact of One-to-One

After nearly a decade of state- and district-wide implementations of one-to-one computing, researchers at North Carolina State University report on results from seven major initiatives.

• Florida’s Leveraging Laptops: The purpose of the Florida program was to develop “effective models for enhancing student achievement through the integration of the laptop computer as a tool for teaching and learning.” During the 2006-7 school year Leveraging Laptops served 47 K-12 schools (15 elementary, 13 middle, and 11 high) in 11 districts and reached 440 teachers and about 20,000 students. The program continued in 2008-9 with 73 K-12 schools and a focus on integrating innovative learning tools and project-based learning activities.

• Maine’s Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI): MLTI, which launched in 2002, provides computers to all seventh and eighth grade students in the state. The program expanded in 2009 to include high schools, although the hardware for the high school students is funded by the schools, not the state. As of January 2010, MLTI served 100% of the public middle schools in the state, 55% of the public high schools and one private high school.

• Michigan’s Freedom to Learn (FTL): FTL was started in 195 Michigan schools in the school year 2005-6. The goal of the program was to improve student learning and awareness of 21st century skills. The initiative took place in elementary, middle, and high schools. A total of 30,000 laptops were distributed to students and teachers.

• North Carolina’s 1:1 Learning Technology Initiative (NCLTI): NCLTI, which started in 2008, was the result of a collaboration between the NC State Board of Education, NC Department of public Instruction, and Golden LEAF Foundation, with support from the SAS Institute. It included eight Early College (EC) high schools and ten traditional high schools, with approximately 9,5000 students in total, and had the overall goal of using technology to improve teaching, student achievement, and prepare students for work, citizenship, and the 21st century.

• Pennsylvania’s Classrooms for the Future (CFF): The CFF initiative was implemented during the 2006-7 school year. The purpose was to prepare the high schools of Pennsylvania for the 21st century and to improve teaching and learning. By the end of the 2009-10 school year, the initiative had impacted 12,000 teachers and 500,000 students.

• Texas’s Immersion Pilot (TIP): TIP was initiated in 2003 by the Texas Legislature to “immerse schools in technology by providing tools, training and support for teachers to fully integrate technology into their classrooms.” 23 school districts participated. One major goal was to increase student achievement through technology immersion. As of 2008, the pilot had reached approximately 14,399 students and 755 teachers in 29 schools.

• Henrico County Virginia’s Teaching and Learning Initiative: The only county-wide initiative included in the white paper, Henrico’s program is the largest of its kind in the nation. The program began in 2001 and had two main goals: to improve students’ 21st century skills and to reduce the digital divide. Since 2001 the district has distributed 24,000 laptops to students, grades 6 – 12, and 3,300 laptops to teachers and administrators.

• Michigan: Students reported that laptops made it easier to do school work and increased their interest in learning

• Maine: Researchers found that students were more engaged and more actively involved in their own learning; this was especially true of students with special needs and those who were at-risk or low-achieving.

• Florida: Observers found significant increases in attention and engagement. Teachers’ action research results documented an increase in conditions that support learning.

• Texas: Teachers reported that immersion increased student engagement

• North Carolina: Teachers felt that technology enhanced student engagement, but also could create a distraction during class.

• Maine: Teachers reported that students, and especially students with disabilities, were more motivated to learn and more interested in school.

• Michigan: Teachers reported that laptops increased student motivation.

• Texas: Students in the lower-implementing middle schools (those that did 1:1 less completely) were glad that they would not have the laptops in high school.

• Henrico County: Teachers at the end of the third year felt that the laptops had not made a difference in students’ desire to learn or their interest in classes.

• Maine: Teachers believed that the laptops improved student achievement in general and especially for students with disabilities. Students at the demonstration schools scored significantly higher in science, math, and social studies than did students at the comparison schools.

• Michigan: Teachers reported that laptops increased student learning

• Florida: Teachers’ action research results documented changes in student achievement (as measured by test scores, higher-level thinking skills, retention, and transfer of learning).

• Texas: Teachers and students in higher-implementing schools believed that immersion improved the quality of students’ products and narrowed the equity gap, while teachers and students in lower-implementing schools believed that the laptops (which were used only occasionally) had a minimal or negative effect on test scores.

• Michigan: Students reported that laptops improved their Internet research skills. These students demonstrated significantly greater Internet and presentation software ability than matched-control students. They also felt that they used higher-order thinking skills to solve problems and challenges

• Florida: Students in the program developed their abilities as producers of digital content, showed signs of developing innovation and critical thinking skills, and developed other workforce skills as a result of the initiative. Researchers observed significant increases in cooperative and collaborative learning and significant decreases in independent seatwork.

• Texas: Students in the higher-implementation schools thought that immersion improved their technology skills, and teachers believed that immersion narrowed the technology equity gap.

• North Carolina: Students reported that they used their technology to analyze information, create new information and submit assignments.

• Maine: Teachers reported that laptops helped Maine students with disabilities interact more with other students and with teachers.

• Henrico: Teachers believed that the laptops enhanced the learning experiences of students with different learning styles.

• Maine: Teachers believed that laptops increased opportunities for individualized learning.

• Pennsylvania: Students were more likely to choose and complete projects based on their interests, and their teachers were more likely to allow them to choose whether they worked independently or in groups.

• Maine: Teachers used their laptops to plan instruction, create integrated lessons, present lessons, and create student assignments. The students used technology to complete assignments, create projects, and communicate with teachers and peers. Benefits perceived by teachers included increase in their own technology skills and classroom management benefits as a result of allowing tech-savvy students to help with technology support.

• North Carolina: Students increasingly used their laptops to present information.

• Texas: In higher implementing schools teachers and students used their laptops for increasingly more sophisticated tasks.

• Michigan: Teachers were confident that they could integrate technology with their curriculum.

• Michigan: Teachers noticed that, with the laptops, their classroom practice increased student-centered activities.

• Maine: Teachers and students noticed that with laptops in the classroom, students became teachers and teachers became learners.

• Texas: In the higher-implementing schools the administrators were supportive of the program from the start and became more supportive over time, while in the lower-implementing schools support was marginal at first and became weaker as time went on.

• Henrico: Administrators used their laptops for management and communication just as the teachers and students were doing.

• North Carolina: Evaluators recommended that administrators could be supportive by facilitating professional development, setting reasonable 1:1 goals, modeling technology use, and communicating the vision of the program.

• Texas: The researchers found that, “Higher-implementing schools developed and maintained close relationships with professional development providers. These schools also gave professional development high priority by building in training days, basic training on teachers’ evolving needs, and holding teaches accountable for implementing what they had learned.”

• Maine: Some teachers cited lack of time and insufficient opportunities for professional development as obstacles to the integration of laptops with the curriculum.

• Pennsylvania: Teachers felt that the necessity of ongoing professional development got in the way of the program getting established.

• North Carolina: Teachers agreed with the need for additional professional development and also wanted more opportunities to collaborate and share ideas with fellow teachers.

• Texas: Higher-implementing schools had good infrastructure before the 1:1 program. Lower-implementing schools had less than optimal infrastructure, which presented challenges for technicians.

• North Carolina: One of the problems that teachers encountered was insufficient Internet access. They also relied heavily on technicians to assist them with smoothly integrating the technology.

• Maine: Teachers identified lack of technical support as one of their main problems.

• Develop a thorough implementation plan and train teachers before distributing digital devices;

• Ascertain that the school or district has the appropriate technology and leadership infrastructure to run the program;

• Secure strong buy-in from all stakeholders, including district and school leadership, teachers, students, parents, and the community;

• Construct a leadership team with an eye toward members who will commit long-term to the initiative and support it;

• Provide continuous professional development that is aligned with teacher needs;

• Ensure continuous availability of efficient technical and instructional support personnel;

• Enact polices for the appropriate use of digital devices and resources; and

• Use data from project evaluations to inform and improve future program decisions.

How to fix the charter school movement (and what Albert Shanker really said) let Jeff Piontek know….

Chris Cerf, the acting commissioner of education in New Jersey, published an article today defending charter schools, which have become very controversial in his state. They have become controversial because the state is trying to push them into suburbs that have great public schools and don’t want them, and they have become controversial because the public is beginning to revolt against for-profit charters, especially for-profit online charters, which Cerf is promoting.

People in New Jersey are beginning to realize that every dollar that goes to a privately managed charter school is a dollar taken away from
their own public school. Because the budget is not expanding, it IS a zero sum game. Fixed costs do not decline when children leave the school.

Despite Governor Chris Christie’s frequent belittling of New Jersey teachers and schools, New Jersey is one of the highest performing states in the nation on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress. So, citizens of the state have good reason to oppose the Christie administration’s efforts to turn more taxpayer dollars over to private entrepreneurs.

In his article, Chris Cerf writes:

…it is often forgotten that one of the first advocates for public charter schools was Albert Shanker, the former New York City teachers’ union leader, who supported charter schools as a way to empower public school educators to innovate.

Chris Cerf needs to know what Albert Shanker really said about charter schools. This is what he would learn if he read pp. 122-124 of my book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System:”

1. Albert Shanker was president of the American Federation of Teachers, not the New York City union, when he first proposed the charter school idea in 1988.

2. Shanker proposed that any new charter should be jointly approved by the union and the school district. More than 90% of charters today are non-union. Shanker would not have approved any school that did not respect the rights of teachers to bargain collectively.

3. Shanker proposed that new charters should target the hardest-to-educate students: those who had dropped out or were failing. He never imagined that charters would have a selection process or that charters might avoid students with disabilities or English-language learners as is now the case in many charters.

3. Shanker wanted charters to collaborate, not compete, with existing public schools. He proposed them as a way to solve the problems of public schools. Whatever they learned, he said, should be shared with the public schools that sponsored them.

4. MOST IMPORTANT: In 1993, when Shanker saw that the charter idea was going to be used to privatize public education, he turned against charter schools. He opposed the takeover of the charter idea by corporations, entrepreneurs, and for-profit vendors. He became a vocal opponent of charter schools when he realized that his idea was embraced by “the education industry.” In his weekly column in The New York Times, Albert Shanker repeatedly denounced charter schools, vouchers, and for-profit management as “quick fixes that won’t fix anything.”

Here is an idea for Commissioner Cerf. You can fix the charter idea if you align it with Shanker’s original idea.

First, insist that all new charters are endorsed by the local school district and the union representing teachers.

Second, bar all for-profit management.

Third, insist that all charters recruit and enroll only the lowest-performing students, the students who have dropped out, and the students who are doing poorly in their present public school.

Fourth, require that charters collaborate with the public schools and share whatever they learn.

Fifth, to truly revive the spirit of Shanker’s proposal, bar all corporate-owned charter chains. Authorize only stand-alone charters that are created by teachers and parents in the district to serve the children of that district. No chains, just local charters committed to that community.

So, yes, Commissioner Cerf, you are on the right track when you quote Albert Shanker. Now, if you take his advice, you can save the charter school idea from the privatizers and profiteers who are giving it a bad name.

Check out these sites if you are looking for education App’s by Jeff Piontek

Fortunately enough, in this age of wired comunication and cloud based connections nothing is hard to get anymore. There are now several  platforms designed specifically to meet teachers and students needs in using mobile devices in  education. These websites are, most of the time, created and run by educators and provide reviews of awesone apps to use for learning. I have compiled a list of these resources for you to bookmark and access whenever you want to look for a certain app to share with students.

1- Educational technology and Mobile Learning

2- One Place for Special Needs

This website provides a detailed app guide for special needs families, speech therapists, occupational therapists, social workers and teachers.

3- Teachers with Apps

4- The iPod Touch Classroom

5- TechChef4u

This app offers a multiple resources to support teachers and parents in their search for free quality apps for their children and students.
6- Kinder Town

Kinder Town transforms mobile devices into powerful teaching tools by finding and organizing the best educational apps for kids ages 3-8 years old.
7- Moms with Apps

This website supports family-friendly developers seeking to promote quality apps for kids
8- Bridging apps

This is a volunteer community of parents, therapists, doctors, and teachers who share information on how we are using the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices with people who have special needs.

9- Fun Educational Apps

This is a website where you can discover the best iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad apps for kids.

10- Teaching Appz

11- iPads in Schools

This is a livebinder that contains several awesome resources on educational apps for teachers, students parents, administrators and many more.

12- iPads for Education

iPads for Education features some of the best educational apps available for teachers and students. It has a great interface and all apps are organized into categories for easy navigation.

13- Appitic

14- Apps in Education

This a great website for iPad apps that teachers and students can use in their education.

15- iPads in Education

Addicted to Social media????? Jeff Piontek wants to know….

Nine out of 10 teens text and use social media sites — a good chunk of them daily — but they still prefer communicating face to face, according to a survey.

Many U.S. teens say they are addicted to social media and texting and often want to unplug. But they feel positive overall about how social media sites such as Facebook and text messaging have helped them connect with friends and family.

The mixed feelings that teens have about digital communication sheds new light on a population growing up immersed in online technology. Research is scant on the behavioral and developmental effects of technology on youth.

A national survey of more than 1,000 people between the ages of 13 and 17 by the child advocacy group Common Sense Media shows how pervasive mobile communications has become for that age group.

“Today’s 13- to 17-year-olds are the first generation to go through their entire teen years with such an array of digital devices and platforms,” said Common Sense Media CEO James Steyer. “This report reads like a primer for parents to teens and tweens — to help them understand how their kids are engaging with technology and to highlight any impact it might be having on their social and emotional well being.”

Text messaging is still the favored application of teens for communicating.

Two-thirds of respondents said they text every day and half said they visit social networking sites daily. One-quarter of teens use at least two different types of social media a day.

Facebook, which is considering lowering its age minimum, dominates teens, with seven out of 10 people surveyed saying they have an account compared to 6 percent for Twitter and 1 percent for GooglePlus and MySpace.

In the report called “Social Media, Social Life: How Teens View Their Digital Lives,” Common Sense Media found that their adolescent respondents felt social media was beneficial.

Half of teens said they feel social networks have helped their friendships, while only 4 percent said the platforms have hurt relationships.

Three out of 10 teens said social networks made them feel more outgoing, compared to 5 percent who said they felt more introverted.

Still, half of all respondents said real-life communication is the most fun and fruitful for their relationships. Only 4 percent prefer to talk on the phone.
What do you think….let me know.

6 Tips to Being a Successful Online Teacher–One Story

After two decades in online teaching in both the corporate world and higher education, I regret to report that the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side of the network connection. While online teaching offers many rewards for instructors, it takes a special set of skills and attitudes to excel at it. And these are emphatically not the same skills and attitudes that make an exceptional classroom teacher. Here’s the mindset it takes to be a successful online teacher:

1. Forget Constant Validation
While it may be heretical to say it, many teachers are attracted to the profession by all the ego-stroking they hope to receive. They remember the worshipful glances that they bestowed on their own favorite classroom teachers, and now they want their share. But there is a world of difference between a warm face-to-face encounter and an e-mail–no matter how appreciative it might be. While there has been much discussion about how e-mail or even video interaction might not meet students’ emotional and security needs, the emotional vacuum on the teacher’s side has gone largely unnoticed.

Online teaching actually requires a much higher level of emotional security and confidence in one’s own professional competence. This is especially true at the middle-school and high-school levels. These students are socialized to think of computer technology as a reliable appliance, like a refrigerator. Online teachers must work hard to humanize their approach and not be turned into a robotic extension of such an appliance by their students.

2. Know Thy Students
It’s hardly news that a great deal of human communication is nonverbal–anyone who’s sat through a long phone conference can tell you that. Now remove the verbal component from the equation and the chances of misunderstanding increase exponentially. It takes a great deal of time and effort on the part of online teachers to make sure they are really clear in their own communications, as well as to understand who they are teaching, what students are trying to tell them, and how well their students are succeeding in each course.

In my online classes, I find myself constantly at risk of wildly misjudging both people and their situations. I have had students whom I have mentally pigeonholed as headed for the dustbin–lacking both ability and enthusiasm–only to discover that they are top-notch performers who simply took a while to get the hang of the online process.

Several semesters ago, I was strongly tempted to ease one particular student out of the program. Her native language was Chinese, and I had concluded from her written work that she did not understand English well enough to pass. She soon taught me that reading comprehension and writing skill grow at dramatically different rates. Today, she is a stay-at-home mother making a good living by remotely providing webmaster services to three small colleges.

3. Lose Complete Control
Many classroom teachers thrive in the emotional sphere I call “command mentality.” Like an orchestra conductor, they love the sense of control that comes with being in charge. They take this responsibility very seriously, and work like demons to get it right. They make sure all students are crystal clear on what is expected of them and the consequences of failing to meet those expectations. These are the instructors who adore the grading rubrics that have become so much a part of classroom teaching in the age of accountability.

For better or worse, fully online instruction can never provide the level of control they crave. To a great extent, online education operates on the honor system. You never know who is really doing the work on the other end of the wire. There is no combination of tightly timed tests, double-password protection systems, or retina-scanning identification gizmos that can change this reality.

The knee-jerk reaction to this observation is to point out that students cheat in regular classroom courses, too. That’s true, but not nearly as easily and, quite possibly, not nearly as frequently. College students may understand the importance of acquiring marketable skills in their classes, as well as good grades. K-12 students are far more likely to just be searching for the shortest path to a grade by any means handy.

If you are confident that you can make a compelling case to your students about the satisfaction and benefits that derive from completing their courses legitimately, you have a future in online education. If you are comfortable only with more coercive methods of extracting effort from students, you need to rethink your game for this new environment.

4. Collaboration Resistance
The dominant educational approach of the last several decades has been constructivism, which puts a high value on collaboration. Many teachers new to online see its vast potential as a vehicle for group work, but my graduate students loathe it. They want to do their own assignments in their own way and don’t appreciate collective responsibility for anyone else’s limitations. All K-12 teachers know how group work can go wrong–the wallflowers, the “alpha dog” dominators, and all the rest. This can happen even when collaboration is attempted in the conventional classroom setting. The challenges of collaboration are multiplied in the less controllable environment of online.

5. Get to Work…Really
Quality classroom teachers succeed by absorbing oral and visual feedback from each class session as it unfolds, and making moment-to-moment adjustments in response. Except for a small minority of instructors working with expensive synchronous learning systems that provide continuous 1-to-1 visual and auditory communication, online teachers don’t have the luxury of making real-time modifications to their instructional strategies. Their teaching must be accurate, complete, and spot-on right out of the chute.

Most of my graduate courses require that I make about 16 hours of technology-demonstration movies. Because I know my students so well, I never settle for the often-perfunctory movies that come with the textbooks. Instead, I tailor my movies to the specific interests of my students and to my ever-emerging understanding of where they are likely to stumble and fall. To do so involves a lot of work: It takes me at least 20 to 30 hours of effort to create one hour of video.

And most of this work has to be done before the course even gets under way. Some of my students live in towns so small that they might have just a couple of traffic lights. They have dicey internet service and personal hardware, which make downloading hourlong movies problematic.

To overcome this, I mail each student a DVD a week before school starts, which means that I have to complete my preparations for the entire semester before it even begins. Between preparation, correspondence, and time-consuming troubleshooting of student problems, I estimate that I put in 50 percent more effort in teaching technical courses online than I would teaching the same material in person.

6. It’s Not Just a Day Job
Teaching online is less a job than a lifestyle. Committed online instructors find it hard to set reasonable boundaries on the workday. When students run into trouble, the instinct is to help them as soon as you can. This tends to happen between 10 p.m. and midnight.

Infographics Are EXPLODING!!!!

Let’s face it, the infographics industry is exploding and now we’re seeing some new tools to help us easily create or generate simple infographics. Currently, infographics agencies charge between $2k and $5k to research, design and promote a fantastic infographic.

The following tools, will make development of your infographics a lot less costly, easier to design and publish, and some include reporting modules to see how well the infographics are distributed and promoted.

Easel.ly – create and share visual ideas online. You may want to visit Visual.ly after creating your infographic to publish and share it with others.

Venngage – Venngage helps you create and publish custom infographics, engage your viewers, and track your results. Venngage is the most powerful infographics publishing platform ever for marketers and publishers

Infogram – We work with marvelous designers to bring you the best components and themes for your infographics. Simply pick whatever you like to build your own.

Piktochart – Piktochart is among the first online web applications to autonomize the creation of infographics. Its vision is to allow non-designers/programmers to create interactive infographics to promote their cause/brand and educate in a fun and engaging manner”

Do you know of any other  online infographics creators or generators which are not included in the list? Feel free to share them with us through the comments below.