What’s this all about?
I have to admit that when I saw this assignment was about cartoons and comics I was not overly excited. I don’t necessarily read them often, never have. Why are we having a complete assignment about this? Then I looked into the three sites given to us and I was hooked after visiting the first one! Cartoons and comics can be used in so many classrooms, with students in many grade levels, and in multiple content areas. Just today at lunch I mentioned what I was working on and three teachers wanted to know more and asked for links. These teachers are from different content areas as well: art, religion, and science. They all plan to use them for instruction and I’ll be here for support.
The three sites that I visited are:
Fotojet—Pixton—MakeBeliefsComix
Make Beliefs Comix
This site is amazing! I have never been one to read comics, but many other family members at my house have such fun with them. I think I’m turning to the dark side after visiting Make Beliefs Comix. This site makes making comics so extremely easy and it has so much to offer. One of the first things that you see when you enter their site is a tutorial video and it is interspersed throughout the website so you are always reminded that if you need help, it is available. Don’t know where to start? Make Beliefs Comix can help. They offer starters, story ideas, helpful hints when you don’t know what to say, comic strips already illustrated and you write the story, and so much more. Every teacher will want to visit Make Beliefs Comix and I can’t wait to use this with my junior high boys and girls. Because this site does have SO much to offer it is my opinion that it would be overwhelming to younger students and I would probably use it with junior high and high school. The owner of this site allows students and educators to use everything on his site for free as long as they are not sold for profit. Teachers may use all of the tools for free and even print for distribution to students but may not sell them.
Fotojet
Fotojet is fun and more appropriate for 4th/5th. With Fotojet there are 10 free templates. You can upload a photo from your files, add lots of really cute clipart, and change the background. These are all easily accessible on the side of the screen and the art or pictures are automatically added when the use clicks on them. They can be scaled to different sizes and moved around the frame. With Fotojet you can try it out for a 7 day free trial, billed monthly, or billed annually for $40.
Pixton
My favorite thing about Pixton is the super clean and non cluttered look it has when you first log in. You are given a panel to work on and can add more as you go along. The main tabs at the top are background, characters, focus, and words. Once these are chosen you then have options to change the characters face and “actions” which changes their body posture. The amount of clothing, emotions, and actions that your character can be in is overwhelming, but very simple to change. It is super simple to add speech bubbles. Simply click on “words” and you get a text box to type in what you want your character to say. The bubble is automatically added to your panel and you have capabilities of moving it around a bit. The characters can also be moved on the panel as well as resized.
One nice thing about Pixton is that you can rate your comic. You rate yourself on background/focus, characters/expression, captions/dialogue, spelling/grammar, theme, and sharing. Once you have rated each of these categories the rubric tells you how your comic is rated and gives you capability to print the rubric.
As I was working on my comic, my 13 year old asked me about what I was doing. After I explained a few steps she said she wanted to create one. She had it figured out in a matter of minutes. I will be using this with the junior high boys on Friday morning. Last Friday was “Device Free Friday,” but this Friday I will ask everyone to take out their Chrome books for some creative fun.
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