Cartoons and Comics

Who doesn’t love a good comic? They can be just as fun (and useful!) as an educational tool as they are in our free time.  This week, I checked out some free comic creation websites, but before I get into reviewing them, I want to talk about some ways that comics can be used for learning in a classroom setting. There are a lot of ways that educators can incorporate creating comics to support or demonstrate learning. Makebeliefscomics.com is a free comic-creation website with lots of lesson plans and educational ideas on the topic. Some of my favorite suggestions of theirs include:

·      Using comics to write an autobiography – this can be done as a writing prompt or as an icebreaker at the beginning of the year

·      Using comics to practice new vocabulary words correctly

·      Making a comic diary – writing comics that reflect your own life frequently and collecting them in one place

·      Creating comics on any topic as a group to work on collaboration skills

·      Writing comics in a foreign language that students are studying

·      Creating comics that comment on local or national politics

·      Using comics to imagine a literary character’s perspective

These are just a few simple ways that the creation of comics could be used in the classroom. As you can see, this fun idea applies to all sorts of subjects from Language Arts to Government to Foreign Language.

MAKEBELIEFSCOMICS.COM

This comic-making website does not require registration which is a big bonus when working with students. That simple registration page can sometimes take forever for students to figure out! Creation of comics is quick and easy. You are able to pick your character and then select from about 4 choices of emotions. This gives you some flexibility in character expression. They have a decent amount of props, backgrounds, and characters to choose from, but some of them don’t go together. For instance, some characters/backgrounds are black and white while others are colored.

Once a comic has been created, it cannot be saved through the website. Students have the option to either print their comic or email it. I personally took a screenshot of the comic I created. This could be a problem in using this with students since many don’t have a functional email and most schools don’t have color printers available for free, however I felt that taking a screenshot of my comic did the trick and students could easily do the same.

Another bonus of this website, even if an educator isn’t using it with their students, is that they have a lot of articles with cool ideas about how to use comics. There are ideas like those I listed above geared toward educators, but they also have ideas for homeschool, lesson plans, and writing prompts.

Here is my makebeliefscomics.com comic:

TOONDOO

I did not like the initial set up of their website. It was really busy with bright colors and graphics everywhere, and it just didn’t seem very professional. I found that it wasn’t as easy to navigate as the other two comic-creation websites I visited.

There were options to pick layouts with different numbers and sizes of frames. This option was a little different from the other two websites that simply had the option to add panels as the creator went along. I was disappointed even in naming my comic- they don’t allow for many characters and my desired title “A Day in the Life” was too long. I wasn’t impressed with the background options available, so I made my comic have abstract backgrounds. I couldn’t figure out how to share my comic that I created, though ToonDoo does give users the option to print the page. I simply took a screen shot of my comic to save it. Overall, I didn’t like the interface or graphics of this website. I found it very childlike and did not feel it helped me to produce a professional looking comic.

I did find one plus to using ToonDoo, though. The option is available to upload your own photographs for your comic. This might be useful if students wanted to act out the comic and take pictures of it, then upload and add their own captions and word bubbles.

Here is the comic that I created using ToonDoo:

PIXTON

This was my favorite comic-creator by far! The registration process was quick and painless with tutorials available to walk users through each step, from adding a title, to selecting a character. To keep the creation process moving quickly, users can create and customize a character and then give them a name, so it is easy to have the same character on multiple panels. Speaking of which, figuring out how to add a panel to my slide was the only thing that took me any time at all.

The comics that you can produce on Pixton are of really professional quality in my opinion. They offer a really wide variety of characters, all customizable, as well as poses for these characters, and tons of backgrounds. I easily made a 6-panel comic and was able to create additional characters halfway through the process. I would definitely use Pixton with students for two reasons: first, I think that Pixton gives enough options that students won’t have to modify their story plan in order to fit the backgrounds/characters available. Second, I love the professional look of the comics created on Pixton, and I think that students would feel very proud of their work using this website.

Here is the comic I created using Pixton (definitely inspired by true life events!):

I will definitely be using comics in the library and the classroom in the future. Leave a comment below to let me know what you think!