Cartoons and Comic Strips

Growing up I loved to read the comics in the local newspaper. Today our students enjoy reading graphic novels in print as well as on their tablets.  In this age of technology, you can enrich their learning with cartoon and comics online created by them. Not good at drawing? Not a problem. Computers now make this job an easy task with the click of a button. I explored the following three cartoon and comic sites: Pixton, ToonDoo, and MakeBeliefsComix. Here is what I learned:

Pixton

Creating an account for Pixtoon was easy and free.  The first thing I did was create my character.  You have the option to save your character and name it. In addition, you can change body positions, add facial expressions, and re-size the them. You can even turn the head 360 degrees! I really had fun with this part, note the character at the end hitting her forehead. LOL!  After I created my characters and named them, I chose the background. There are a variety to choose from, as well as different props. Next, I added the conversation bubbles, easy as well. The scene I created was a true story about my nephew's conversation with my sister when he was around five or six. LOL, too cute. 

I think that Pixton is user friendly and has many options of which to choose from. I really enjoyed creating my characters and customizing them to my liking, and I feel that it is easy enough for students to use.  Saving the comic was very simple and it stays stored in your account. You can publish, share with friends, and e-mail it to yourself and friends, or share on social media. There are also many other options of which to choose from, but you have to have a paid account. Overall, I think this is a great site and can't wait to use it with students!

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ToonDoo

Creating an account is easy and free, unless you pay for the ToonDooSpaces. However, it took a long time to load, more than 40 minutes. After a while I changed browsers, but no luck so I gave up, and tried again the next evening. With a fresh frame of mind I updated my Adobe Flash player, and it uploaded to 99%, and then after about a minute it loaded. I clicked on the toolbar and these options appeared: ToonDo maker, Bookmaker, Tools, Compleetoons, Dooers, TraitR, DoodleR, and Shop. I clicked on the ToonDoo Maker and was given the option to choose my layout, and chose the two square layout. I mostly had to figure out how to create it, no mini tutorial offered. After I chose one of the characters, I dragged it to the square, and again it took longer than three minutes for them to upload to comic square. It was a little frustrating and I continued just playing with it until I figured it out. This site also offers a variety of backgrounds, (which didn't take long to upload) and props, I added a cake and party hat on my alien. Adding the conversation bubbles and expressive words were easy. This was a riddle one of my students shared with me the other day. I thought it was cute. 

This site took me way longer to upload the templates than the other two. Once I was done with my cartoon, I wanted to save it, but could not find the save button until I clicked on one of the above tabs (in the "start here" tab).  Although I was a bit frustrated with the "slowness" of the site, I really did like that it was colorful and  the features it offered such as: variety of backgrounds, characters, texts, shapes, props, and clip art, which would allow any user to create a variety of comics. I only used ToonDoo Maker, and still need to explore this site further before I say more. As far as ToonMaker, other than it taking time to upload images, I really did like the features I used. However, in my opinion it was not as user friendly as the other two comic sites I explored. I think students might have a harder time using it.

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Make Beliefs Comix


Signing up for Make Beliefs Comix is easy and no registration is required, since it does not store your comics, instead you print or e-mail it to yourself. This site provides a"how to" demo video that highlights the main steps to create your comic. On the home page below the comic strip, there are two buttons to enter the site, one in English and the other in Spanish.  It also states that you can type your comic in other languages such as: French, German, Portuguese, and Latin. Once I clicked on the "enter here" button it took me straight to the template. There are a variety of options to choose from for your character, backgrounds with detail or just plain colors, words, and other objects. The characters are mostly limited to black and white, and a few are in color, but did not have a wide variety. However, I liked the fact that you can choose from various actions, and have the option to flip the characters and re-size them. 

Although this site didn't offer too much variety, it was fairly easy to use. I feel that it is good for students to use since it requires no set up and is very basic. Our students have their own e-mail accounts and can easily send it to themselves. I also liked the fact that it offers valuable information such as lesson plans and tips for teachers, and parent links and tips. Overall this is a good site and user friendly. I feel kids would enjoy this one as well.

Overall, I really enjoyed creating comics in these three sites. I am already thinking of how to implement them into my lessons. My fifth graders read two class novels every semester, and they can extend on their reading by writing a different ending to the novel, or creating a summary of it.  In Social Studies we are covering the events leading up to the American Revolution. This would be a great way students can give an account of these main events.

As a future librarian, I can create comics to promote events happening in the library such as Literacy Night and Book Fairs to name a few. Which one would I choose for my students? I'd probably begin with Make Beliefs Comix and then show them how to use Pixtoon, which is the one I preferred for my students. However, since some kids are tech savvy, I'd want to expose them to ToonDoos as well. I think as with any new technology application, the more you use it, the better you get. That being said, it depends on the user and their preference. That's why I like to give my students choices, they're old enough (5th), but I can see where the lower grades would start at a more basic level.

Tellagami was very easy to use. I simply just downloaded the App on my iPhone, then followed their easy step by step instructions. After recording, I sent it to my e-mail, and also had the option to save on my phone.