An Eye for Information: A Checklist for Presenting Visual Information

Have you let your audience know what's important?

Headline/Title

• tells what your research is about
• grabs attention

Thesis/summary box

• summarizes basic information needed to understand display
• explains key terms

Highlights box

• lists and defines main issues and statistics (if applicable)

Visuals

• relate to your research
• include captions that completely and clearly explain pictures
• can be original creations, like cartoons, used to make a point quickly and memorably

Quotation boxes

• attract interest by being lively
• help make key ideas clear
• bring historical figures to life

Have you visually organized complex information to promote quick understanding?

If the relationship or events over time is important, have you used a:

• flow chart to visually organize events that happened in a certain order?
• timeline to arrange dates from the earliest to the most recent?

If it is important to know where things happened, have you used a:

• map to show where events happened?
• map set in a bigger context (state, country, continent)?
• map as a visual centerpiece for a set of facts related to different places?

If number/quantities are important, have you used a:

• graph to make amounts visual?
• graph turned into pictograms that relate to your topic?

Adapted from: Rankin, Virginia. "Get Smart." School Library Journal August, 1996 : 22-27. MAS. EBSCOhost. 24 July 2002 <http://ehostvgw10.epnet.com/ehost.asp?>

Defining

Locating

Selecting

Organizing

Presenting

Evaluating

Please send comments or questions to the 4J Web Team.
Eugene School District 4J
200 North Monroe Street, Eugene, Oregon 97402
Phone: 541.687.3123 [TTD 541.687.3447]

Last modified: October, 2003 by Steinke, Ague, Feuerhelm, Maxwell, and Warburg