Cartoons and Comics

This past week, I explored and experimented with a few different cartoon and comic strip making sites.  I haven't ever created my own cartoon or comic, but I've seen them used in different presentations, for other classes before.  It was a good experience and I know that students will love this tool, as well!
I visited the site, http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/How-to-Play/Educators/ , which had dozens of ideas on how to use comic strips, not only in school, but at home too.  They even have lesson plans for teachers!  I loved reading the lists of ways to use comix in the classroom (it made me miss being in the classroom so much!).  There are seriously a ton of ways to use comic strips in the classroom (and even in the library)!  My top four favorite, that I can't wait to try out are:
1. Practicing new vocabulary words- create a comic that uses new words learned
2. Understanding literary character perspectives- have students assume the roles of two of the characters with each on'es personality and voice and have them interact with each other.
3. Story boards- illustrate a book that has been read, kind of like a book report.  Summarize and comment on what was read.
4. Autobiographical/biographical introduction- use the comic strips/cartoons as a means of introducing yourself, or even introducing characters from books

Below are three of my comic strips, with my evaluation of each site that I used to create the comic.

ToonDoo:

ToonDoo had a lot of options and variety of choices for backgrounds, characters, and text, for making your comic and it was relatively easy.  All you have to do is click and drag.  I had a huge problem with saving my work and being able to access it.  I tried creating multiple comics, but every time I saved, when I went back to download the comic, all my saved toons had the message, "under image processing."  I ended up screen shotting my comic, to add to my blog post.  As soon as I can figure out this problem (I'm certain it's user error, but I haven't had luck solving my problem as of yet) I'd like to play with this website a little more, as I know it offers a lot.  I can see this site being very useful for students, since it's easy to navigate and use.

Pixton:



This site is fairly easy to navigate, but it's not as simple as ToonDoo.  It also has a more limited variety of characters and other items to choose from, but it doesn't hinder the comics from being interesting.  I did like that there were options for creating a "comic strip," "storyboard," or "graphic novel."  I think these options lend themselves well to the different projects that comics could be used for in the classroom and library.  I decided to stay with my introduction theme for making the comics, but I think this site would be a great tool for doing a book review or book report.  I think students would find this site fairly easy to use, but probably not as easy as ToonDoo.

MakeBeliefsComix:

This was probably my least favorite of the sites I explored.  But it's also the cookiest, so I feel like it would appeal to students.  I did like that you don't have to create an account to create a comic, you just jump right in.  This comic creator felt much more limited than the other creation sites.  I think this could be a good think when just getting started, since you aren't overwhelmed with all the choices, but it's definitely limiting on what all you can do.  It is easy to use and that is a big advantage.  I would say this site might be the easiest for younger students, since they won't get caught up in having to make a lot of different choices.  Also, everything has to be short and sweet, so again, I think that lends itself to being used by younger aged students.  It was very easy to save work and share.

Final Thoughts:
All in all, this was a growing experience for me.  I can definitely use some practice in creating comics and I need to figure out what my issue is with ToonDoo- especially because that was probably my favorite comic making site, and one that I would like to use in the future.  I can see comic strips being a really awesome and fun tool to use in the classroom.  As for using comics in the library, I could see using them as a librarian to get kids interested in certain books, piquing interest about characters, and maybe for advertising an upcoming event or explaining a certain library process.  I could also see the benefit of having students create comics for books and then posting them around the library or school, for other students to see (kind of like a book advertisement of sorts).  And of course, I can see using comics as a means of introductions for either the librarian or other school staff.  I'm looking forward to seeing how my fellow classmates say they will use comics in their libraries, in the future.