My first infographic

Update: here is a link to some great free tools to make Infographics.

I created this infographic with LibreOffice Impress (the free equivalent to Powerpoint), LibreOffice Calc (the free equivalent to Excel) and the vector graphic program Inkscape.  Note that there is a portable version of Inkscape that can be run off a flash drive (and LibreOffice too)! I was using LibreOffice because my personal laptop at home doesn't have a license for Microsoft Office (MS only lets staff buy ONE license for home for $11). This is still rather rough, but could be used in the Saskatchewan grade 09 Space Exploration unit.  You could use it as a way to concisely summarise the costs and benefits of space exploration by highlighting important milestones of each advancing technology as well as key aspects of each technology throughout the years.  Along the way, I found some interesting links:

• Space Encylopedia that had the costs of piloted US Space Programs
• The above author's critical analysis of space programs
• Summary of the Cassini mission to Saturn including costs 

How it was made:

1. I created a presentation and made a slide for each technology / point in history.  For each slide, I did an advanced Google search to look for images that were labelled for reuse.  I couldn't find one of a ray diagram for a reflector telescope, so I made one in LibreOffice Draw and touched it up in Paint.  Note that images from NASA or other US government agencies are automatically freely usable.  I actually hyperlinked each image in the Impress presentation to the source of the image (can't do that on the infographic though).
2. I exported each LibreOffice Impress slide to a PNG file.
3. I created a spreadsheet bar chart in LibreOffice Calc that compared costs for space programs and copied the chart into Inkscape (see below).
4. I created a 100 cm by 100 cm drawing document in Inkscape.  I made 3 layers.  The first layer was for a background (I used this image from the Hubble telescope - changed the opacity to about 30%).  The second layer contained the chart from step 3.  I then imported each of the slides from step 2 into the 3rd layer of Inkscape.
5. I then exported the entire page from Inkscape to the PNG shown above.

Some tips on making these is given here.  For examples of Infographics, visit
http://www.coolinfographics.com/
http://dailyinfographic.com/

A great source of ideas and how-to is here.

Using the idea that images from NASA are free to use, I modified my search to "how a telescope works nasa" and found this

Note the copyright free notice on the Hubble site.  So, the space unit or anything that uses US government material would be ideal for students to recreate their own understandings.

My telescope image may be freely used:

This one (drawn with Inkscape, touched up in Paint) is better as it doesn't put the plane mirror at the focal point of the concave mirror!  The vector SVG file may also be freely used.

Reflecting Telescope by L Ruo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at 3.bp.blogspot.com.

For SPSD employees, the complete files are located here.  You will need your username and password to access it.

How to draw the telescope in Inkscape Part 1 of 6 (wmv video)
How to draw the telescope in Inkscape Part 2 of 6 (wmv video)
How to draw the telescope in Inkscape Part 3 of 6 (wmv video)
How to draw the telescope in Inkscape Part 4 of 6 (wmv video)
How to draw the telescope in Inkscape Part 5 of 6 (wmv video)
How to draw the telescope in Inkscape Part 6 of 6 (wmv video)

Inkscape Basic Tutorial: http://inkscape.org/doc/basic/tutorial-basic.html

Getting started with Inkscape: http://ostatic.com/blog/getting-started-with-the-powerful-inkscape-graphics-app

Sources of data: http://blog.visual.ly/data-sources/