Cartoons and Comics
As a child, I always loved to read the comics. My parent never had a subscription to the newspaper, but anytime we bought one my brother and I had to read the comics. Of course, Sunday comics were the best. They were in COLOR!!!
Now as an adult, I have noticed the same love of comics in my own children. I believe children love the simplicity and ease that comics possess. I have mentioned several times that I am currently working in an elementary library. I have witnessed the love by boys and girls for graphic novels. It is so popular that I have pulled them from the spot in the Dewey decimal system and given them their own book case. There the patrons of my library can find graphic novels of all kinds: fiction, biography, informational, etc...
Over the past week I have had the opportunity to learn about another wonderful application of technology. Teachers and students can easily create/author their own comics!!! I explored three different sites that provide such a service to their users.
Pixton requires users to set up an user name and log in. There are three different account options that are available: Pixton for fun (personal use), Pixton for schools (proof that you work with a school is required), and Pixton for Business. Of course, you can purchase a subscription as well to get more out of the program. The program was fairly easy to use. In the upper left corner are the menu buttons. Click the "pencil" to continue to work on a strip or to create something new. From there, you need to pick your layout - comic strip, storyboard, graphic novel, poster, or photo story. I explored with the comic strip layout. The creators also break it up into beginner and advanced users. I chose beginner and was given a large amount of settings to start my strip. The user the must chose either 1, 2, or 3 characters for the first pane. It goes on to have you pick pre-made characters based on your setting. I found adding dialogue easy. Overall, I feel students (and teachers) would find this easy and entertaining to use. It was by far my favorite of the three. Here is my example of how it could be used;
My cartoon strip
Pixton is not the only program available for free. Next I looked at www.makebeliefscomix.com
This comic doesn't require a login or membership. The program is simple: click and drag to the pane. I was easy to delete items. I believe third grade and up could handle creating comic strips on this.
The art work is basic. The comics can be emailed, printed, and posted on to facebook. There is additional resources and tools at the bottom of the page for students, parents, and teachers.
Here is my example:
Lastly, we come to Toondoo.com.
When I began researching the three different sites, I started with Toondoo. The first night I found it incredibly slow. Nothing was loading, so I figured my internet was not working correctly. I have since tried it three more evenings and on two different computers.
The program would allow me to sign in and pick a layout. I would chose my layout, and then I would get stuck. It stayed on these screens for over an hour. I would refresh and/or restart my computer, and it would start all over. My computer is updated to Windows10, so I thought maybe the website had problems with it. My laptop has Windows8, but ran into the same issue. This website uses Adobe Flashplayer, which is notorious for hanging up or having "issues." My Adobe Flashplayer is updated to the latest version. I also tried the program using internet explorer and google chrome. Both yielded the same results. This was highly frustrating for me. Students will definitely not have the patience for this program.
Students thrive when asked to use technology for an assignment. It is the single best way to get them engaged quickly. Comics can be use to demonstrate knowledge learned, as a presentation for a project, as an instructional tool and much more. These will definitely be added to my bag of tricks!!!
FYI...
Telligami is a free app at the Apple app store. You can create short videos with an animated character and a recording of your voice. I know many times as a teacher I felt like a broken record. Why should I repeat myself? I should just record and save these little mini videos to play. Love it!!!! Check out my "gami!"
Danna,
ReplyDeleteI agree, when it comes to technology, students are ready to go. This is an engaging way to get the students to apply what they've learned in a fun way.
I also had loading problems with ToonDoo. One evening I tried and had the same issues as you stated above. I tried the next evening after updating my Adobe Flash Player, and still had loading issues. I finally was able to create a comic, but it did take way longer than the other two sites. Although I liked some of the features the site offered, by the time I was finally done, I was frustrated.
I accidently left Toondoo loading on my laptop. When I got up Saturday morning, it was still attempting to load!!!
ReplyDeleteWow. That's not very user-friendly. If you don't know what's wrong, it's a hard thing to fix. I am so grateful that you thought to pull the graphic novels and nonfiction into their own bookcase! Sometimes as a patron it's nice to know exactly where to go in the library for what I want! And I'm a bit of an iconoclast~ my library is notoriously _not_ whisper quiet :)
ReplyDeleteYou managed to get my husband interested in your book talk using Tellagami. You actually distracted him from Fallout 4. Bravo!
ReplyDelete