Educational Value 
As I explored the potential values of using Piktochart in my classroom I have had several content-based projects and assessments in mind. For example, the students in my class have been studying revolutions and changes that occurred in history in our world. We have been focusing specifically on major events in U.S. history that caused the American Revolution. The students actually just made infographics that summarized two major events that led to the start of the Revolutionary War. Most of the students chose to closely study the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre and made some great infographics as an assessment. Unfortunately, I had not heard of the Piktochart tool when assigning this project. Reflecting on the student’s finalproducts, Piktochart would have served as the perfect software for this project. Students could also use Piktochart to create infographics to display a math project, or present one of Newton’s Laws of Motion. My students also closely study various environmental biomes around the world and could create an infographic as the final product for this research. Lastly, students could use infographics to create an advertisement for a novel they recently read to assess comprehension. 

After testing out Piktochart myself and creating my own infographic, I think students as young as 3rd and 4th grade could handle the software. To fully understand the functionality of the software, I created an infographic advertisement to persuade travelers to visit Maryland. The real-time saving and easy-to-navigate tool box is something that elementary school students need. On the other end of the spectrum, the free version of Piktochart includes a variety of features that are appropriate for older students and adults. In fact, after reviewing the entire website, the software seems to target an audience of business professionals in addition to educators. In other words, the software is complex and rigorous when the user makes it so, but can also be simple and concise for beginners. 

There are many benefits of using infographics in education to assess and teach academic standards. By performing close reading protocols and closely analyzing infographics with students in a whole or small group setting students learn to read more than just text. Infographics can provide students with an opportunity to closely examine images, graphs, maps and much more. One way that teachers could use Piktochart to enhance instruction is through creating infographics in presentation mode. Instead of using Powerpoint slides or Prezi, teachers can create infographics on Piktochart that teaches the necessary content. The infographic can be projected for the class to view in presentation as a whole group or on their own device. This mode allows viewers to enjoy all pieces of the infographic in a sequential format. Teachers can share the URL link to their Piktochart infographic for students to have access to at home. Students can then refer to this content-enriched infographic in whichever format they choose.

The main benefit of using this software over other instructional strategies is the various levels of thinking it requires students to conduct. As students use Piktochart to create their own infographics for projects and assessments, they navigate their way through multiple levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. For example, if students were to create an infographic on the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest, they must first understand the content. They have to then apply research skills to answer focus questions that relate to the criteria their teacher desires. Simultaneously, students should be evaluating the research sources (i.e. primary vs. secondary, websites, journals etc…) as they answer their questions. They also need to evaluate and decide which non-copyrighted images and maps they might use in their infographic. Finally, students have to actually use the Piktochart software to create their infographic. I can confidently say that not many instructional strategies use this many different levels of thinking. In conclusion, Piktochart can certainly deliver and assess the objectives in a unique and efficient way that other software and instructional strategies cannot compete with. 

As I think about the Common Core State Standards that 5th grade students need to master, I can think of several specific examples of how Piktochart can support this teaching and learning. The Piktochart website includes a featured section where students and teachers can view infographics that other users have created. As I think about the potential biome project, where students create a Piktochart on an environment like the Amazon Rainforest or Sahara Desert, this feature would be very helpful. Teachers could use featured infographics to point out examples and non-examples of what the students should do with their own Piktochart. I began working on my own infographic called “Visit Maryland!” so I could get a better sense of the tools that are available. One major benefit of this infographic software as opposed to others is the fact that you can upload your own images into your creations. As attendees of an arts and technology integrated school, my students do a lot of digital art projects on applications like Paper53, Drawcast, and Pixie. My 5th grade students also enjoy using PicSitch do make digital collages of their artwork. They would be able to create artwork that touches on the theme of their biome, such as a picture of trees being destroyed in a rainforest, and upload the original image into Piktochart. This practice would also teach students the idea that the best way to avoid copyright issues is to create your own music and images. As a final point, Piktochart has many strengths that would allow teachers to enrich a plethora of standards from the Common Core Curriculum. 

Through creating my own infographic on Piktochart I found a minimal amount of limitations with the software. The main weakness of the software is the iOS application version for iPads. The application only allows users to share and view inforgraphics as opposed to create and make edits. This is quite common for web-based software and really does not surprise me. Unfortunately, my students use iPads on a daily basis and have limited access to laptops. On the other hand, students can view the featured secition of Piktochart on the iPad app. Therefore, my students would still be able to analyze and critique other user’s inforgraphics. One suggestion I would have for developers at Piktochart would involve the publishing stage. Conveniently, the software updates and saves automatically in real time as users work on their infographics. The Piktocharts will not update if any changes are made after they are published, however. As a teacher, my students complete all of their writing assignments on Evernote or Google Drive. They often publish sharable links to these documents on their My Big Campus blog for other students and teachers to see. Often times, I give the students feedback and ask that they make changes to their writing assignment. Even after the document is published to their blog, the Evernote or Google Drive links update in a matter of seconds. This is definitely a feature that Piktochart should consider adopting.

Ease of Use/ Installation
The primary version of Piktochart is a web-based software and therefore does not require any downloading. The iOS application downloads very quickly and only takes up 13.8 MB. The tutorial video on the Piktochart website provides easy tips for navigation that allowed me to understand the software in a few minutes. I feel that students would also find Piktochart very easy to learn and use. The infographic creator tools are all clearly listed on the left column of any browser and students can obviously see that they need to be clicked and dragged onto the template. The share, download, publish, and preview features are not only labeled in text but with the universal symbols as well. Most importantly, I found that Piktochart was quick and used minimal bandwidth from my home and school Wi-Fi connections. This provided me with a smooth and efficient experience while testing the software firsthand. Overall, Piktochart is extremely user friendly for teachers and students both. It is no wonder that the website’s testimonials page is filled with quotes from happy users from all over the world.    

Recommendation
I would definitely recommend that fellow 5th grade teachers try using Piktochart with their students. I would rate the web-based version of this software a 4.5 out of 5 and the iPad application a 3.5 out of 5. The strengths of this software outweigh the short list of limitations by a long shot. The user guides on the homepage of Piktochart.com engage beginner users right away and meet the needs of various learning styles. Whether teachers are planning to create infographics for their students or with their students, Piktochart would be my software of choice. Other infographic creators like Infogr.am or Grafio are not nearly as versatile and user friendly in my opinion. After reviewing the software I am excited to finish and publish my “Visit Maryland!” infographic and share it with my students. Even more, I am ecstatic to get started with a project that assesses the mastery of a content standard by having students create infographics on Piktocharts. During the last marking period I plan to have students create infographics about the United States government. I will publish each of the student’s infographics to my Twitter account so stay tuned!    

Sources
Create Easy Infographics, Reports, Presentations | Piktochart. (2014, May 9). Retrieved March 18, 2015, from http://piktochart.com/

 Roblyer, M., & Doering, A. (2013). Theory into Practice: Foundations for Effective Technology Integration. In Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (6th ed., p. 338). Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson Education.    

Almost every educator in today’s schools often state that their biggest problem is a lack of time. Over 5 years ago, educators like Aaron Sams and John Bergman started “flipping” their classroom to solve this issue. According to Flipped Learning Network's flipppedlearning.org, this style of instruction is defined as “a pedagogical approach in which the direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space” (Flipped Learning Network, 2014). In other words, students are provided with the whole group lectures and lessons at home or in a more personalized environment. This whole group instruction is often delivered through video or podcasts and are archived. During a full day workshop in November of 2013, I had the opportunity to meet and work with Aaron Sams. When posed with the question, “what does the teacher do during class if the students have already heard the lecture or engaged in the whole group lesson?” Aaron was quick to rattle off an extremely long list of potential “teacher-to-do's, some of which included:

• Facilitate inquiry/ problem based learning
• Facilitate project based learning
• Provide enrichment or intervention lessons
• Conduct individual student conferences
• Provide guided instruction
• Gamify lessons 

In other words, providing students with the direct instruction in an alternative environment can result in MORE TIME for amazing learning to occur in the classroom!

Many educators question whether flipped learning practices has a place in the Elementary classroom. Elementary schools are full of young readers, writers, mathematicians, and scientists who reap great benefits from explicit modeling. Therefore, I would argue that a blended approach, more like a somersault than a full flip, is the perfect solution!

(See below for a video describing Aaron Sams' Flipped Classroom)

I started "somersaulting" my 5th grade classroom during the 2013-2014 school year. I began by asking my students to watch math lesson videos for homework a couple nights a week. Many teachers who have flipped their classrooms completely, ask their students to watch a video for homework every night of the week. I feel that at the Elementary level this is a bit of an overload. Regardless of how many videos the students are required to watch each week, it is important to make the content easily accessible. I always ensure that the videos students are asked to watch are accessible on a variety of devices including smart phones, tablets, iPod touches, and computers. I even mention to students that I will burn them a DVD if they think internet at home will be an issue. So far, I have not has a single students actually ask me for a DVD. I post the videos under announcements on our class My Big Campus group and generally on my Twitter page. I always ask the students to answer a question, or comment with a question or new insight to prove that they have watched the video. Depending on the content and objective being addressed in the video, I almost always still conduct a whole group lesson the next day. The comments and feedback from the video always dictate the length and level of explicit modeling of this lesson. The comments and feedback from the video can also help me decide which students need to be pulled for guided practice once the rest of the class gets started with the project or problem based learning activity. 

Recently, I discovered an amazing Ed Tech tool called eduCanon that allows teachers to assess their students' understanding during the video. I would argue that eduCanon is currently the best free tool on the market for video instruction assessment and accountability. Teachers and students can both sign in with their Google Accounts on iPads and computers. Teachers can create multiple class groups and have their students join with a code. Once a group is created, teachers begin creating “bulbs.” A “bulb” is basically a lesson plan that revolves around a video. In order to create the “bulb” teachers must first choose a video to upload. This video can be original content or created my other educators.  EduCanon allows teachers to upload videos from Youtube. Teachers then begin adding questions to the “bulb” at certain points during the video. For example, I recently used eduCanon to assess my students’ understanding of this Causes of the American Revolution - Parent Child Analogies - video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilOhWwexHnI). As students are watching the video they will be prompted to answer the first question forty-five seconds and can not continue watching the video until they do so. As the students are watching the video and completing the questions I can monitor their progress from my account. Students also can view their results at the end of each "bulb." 

(See an example of my Causes of the American Revolution Bulb below)

Teachers who are interested in flipping or somersaulting their classrooms might ask, “how do you make the time to create all of the videos?” The simple answer to that question is, “you don’t!” As technology increases its presence in the classroom, more and more resources are becoming available for teachers to use to provide students with whole group lessons in their own learning space. Websites like LearnZillion, Khan Academy, and TenMarks are curated with Common Core aligned lesson videos and activities that teachers can assign their students in a variety of ways. PBS Learning Media and My Big Campus Library are also great places to look for engaging videos and lessons. These two libraries are great because teachers are asked to rate the content.

For ambitious teachers who want to create their own videos, I would suggest utilizing some of the tools TechSmith has to offer. Screen casting software like Camtasia allows teachers to create instructional videos with multiple layers of video content, like the example I have provided below. I also have used student generated videos to flip lessons. Students in my class have created videos on how to multiply decimal numbers using applications like Educreations and DoodleCastPro. These videos can be posted in a location like My Big Campus Announcements or a shared Google Drive folder and used for the entire class to watch. Whether I am using an original video or one that I found online, I make sure my students know where they can access ALL of the videos so they can always refer back to them. In other words, rather than just using the videos to introduce content to students they CAN and SHOULD be used to reinforce what has already been taught. 

(See an example of an instructional video I created with Camtasia 2) 

The most important part about using flipped instructional practices in your classroom is making sure the students and parents still know who the TRUE educator is. Students in my classroom may have grown accustomed to the soothing voices of LearnZillion teachers or the voice of Sal Khan, but they know I am the primary person who will model, explain, answer, assess, and TEACH the content! 

(Click here for this month's Blogger Bonus on how to use Google Voice as a tool to assess students and hold them accountable for the content you are teaching!)