Cartoons and Comics

 This was my first time creating digital comics and let me tell you, it was so much fun! I think students would really enjoy assignments using comics. They can be used to create comics about any topic. Some great uses in the classroom include:

• All About Me projects at the beginning of the school year
• Retellings of reading assignments in class
• Teaching a concept to other students
• Practicing dialogue 
• Creative writing
• Conflict resolution 
• Figurative language
• Comic diaries
• really the uses are endless!

I used Pixton.com to create my first comic and it was so easy to use. Students can choose the backgrounds, characters, dialogue, etc. to create their own unique comic about any topic. There were plenty of free options to use. It was also easy to save and share with others. Here is my comic and a link to my comic using Pixton:

I also used MakeBeliefsComix.com to create a simple comic. I was not impressed with this site. For me, it was not as easy to use as Pixton.com but it did seem to have more options. Here is my short comic using MakeBeliefsComix:

Since Toondoo was not a working site anymore I used Storyboardthat.com . You have to purchase an account to remove the watermark, but I just used the free account to see what was available. I really liked this site, but wish that it had a free version without the watermark. I think students would enjoy using this site and would be able to get creative! It is a site that I would recommend for my administrator to purchase.

Here is my comic using Storyboardthat:

As a librarian, I would conduct professional development for teachers by first creating a comic similar to the one above. I would also create comics to target content areas and demonstrate how they can be used as a teaching tool as well as a tool for students to use. I would choose sites to demonstrate how easy and fun it is to create! I would then allow them time to "play around" with the sites so they could experience it first hand.