Blog and Infographic Project (Activity)

Title Blog and Infographic Project
Overview In this project, students will learn more about an open source topic, create an infographic based upon their research, and write a blog post reflecting upon what they learned.
Prerequisite Knowledge You should already know how to post to a blog (see Parts 1 and 2 of Blog_Activity) No programming knowledge is required!
Learning Objectives To increase awareness of the impact of open source use within society To introduce students to resources available on opensource.com and within the open source community Optional To work with someone at opensource.com to actually publish one or a few of these

Background:

Increasingly, infographics are being used to summarize information on a topic in a succinct and visually appealing way. For this project, students will create their own unique infographic based upon research into Open Source Software. You should not just copy an infographic on your topic that you found online. This is an opportunity to use your creativity to experiment with an increasingly popular format for marketing on the Web.

Here's a link that describes characteristics of successful infographics: http://sociallysorted.com.au/7-superpowers-of-a-knockout-infographic/.

This blog describes a number of free tools that will help you to create infographics: http://www.creativebloq.com/infographic/tools-2131971. Several students have found particular success in using PiktoChart.com

Notes to faculty:

• Under the topic description, intentionally keeping this open-ended to encourage students to find interesting research without boxing them in. If the student asks for more direction, please consider in advance how you will answer that question.
• Infographics typically are high on numeric data. Some of the topics below may be more or less quantifiable. May need to allow for some more like a compacted slide/summary instead of a traditional infographic.

NOTE TO SELF: Add a source article or blog post for each topic

Directions:

Step 1: Select a Topic

Choose from one of the following topics:

• Estimate how much open source software is used by businesses (versus proprietary software; provide specific examples)
• Why should businesses care about open source software?
• When you are buying and implementing a software system, what are all the costs associated with it? Compare open source software vs. proprietary. Examples to consider include support, training, consulting, patching security issues, etc.
• What are the different types of software licenses available? How does each benefit society? What if you use software licenses improperly?
• Business Model -- what makes open source business modesl sustainable and profitable? Example: Red Hat
• Why might a major business contribute to open source? For example: allowing paid employees to use work time to work on improving open source software.
• What are the market and economic pressures that drive business to consider an open source solution? Be sure to consider flexibility of the software, the ability to quickly respond to customer requirements, being able to attract and retain highly qualified technical employees. Source article: https://docs.google.com/a/redhat.com/document/d/11kZeoU5xAdVvGYOsfBmNk0ggTrBg0VPGl12HW6bXJfY/pub
• What motivates people to contribute to open source software projects?
• Learn more about a specific humantarian open source project

1. Ushahidi ( www.ushahidi.com )
2. OpenMRS ( www.openmrs.org )
3. Sahana ( www.sahanafoundation.org )
4. Humanitarian FOSS Project ( www.hfoss.org )

Step 2: Collect and Summarize Data

• Read the starter article provided above related to your topic
• Conduct additional online research to find at least 2 additional online articles related to your topic
• Write a blog posting that summarizes your research that addresses each of the following points:
  • Provides a summary of the articles in your own words. Do not just copy and paste sentences from the article! Clearly label this section as “Article Summary” (at least 500 words)
  • Provide a listing of at least 5 numeric data points about your topic. Clearly label this section as “Statistics”.
  • Include a link to the original articles. Clearly label this section as "Resources"

Step 3: Create Infographic

• Review background information about what makes a quality infographic: http://sociallysorted.com.au/7-superpowers-of-a-knockout-infographic/.
• Identify an appropriate story and how best to fit this within an infographic
• Utilize one of the freely available infographic building tools to create the visual
• Edit the blog post that you created in Step 2 to include this infographic

Step 4: Blog Post

• Write a blog

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