Cartoons and Comics

 With the rise of graphic novel popularity in schools, comics are a new option for students to show learning material and to share personal stories.  Check out these comic creation sites to use.

Fotojet

   I found Fotojet to be not as user friendly as other sites.  There is an option to sign up for a free trial period, but you still have to enter credit card information. This might deter some people, but you can cancel at anytime.  The amount of templates offered didn't seem to have a very wide variety.  However, once you type in your credit card information, you get access to more templates and creation options.  When creating my comic, I found it very easy to search for and add photos into my comic creation.  

Pixton

    

    Pixton is the comic creator that I enjoyed the most.  After you create an account, you are given lots of options including lesson ideas, Comic School (how to make comics), create a class photo, rubrics and assessments, printables and much more.  The user is given a step by step guide to show you how to create a comic written in a comic form.  As you are creating, it's very easy to move and add characters, change the background, and add more panels to your comic strip.  If you add speech bubbles to the characters and you move the character around, the speech bubble follows the character.  I had fun searching the different characters and all the different character poses. I was also impressed with the variety of backgrounds you can add to your comic. The possibilities seemed pretty close to endless on this site.

MakeBeliefsComix

     This wasn't my favorite comic creator site, but it wasn't my least favorite.  After you create your account, there are eleven tips written out on how to get started with your creation.  For the not so creative users, like myself, this site gives you already made comics that you just add words to or fill in the blanks.  This was helpful to a user like me because this is the first time I have ever created comics.  This site was a little hard to navigate at first because finding where to start was a little tricky, but once I played around a little I was able to find some cool tools.

Using Comics and Cartoons in Schools

  As much as I am not a fan, personally, of comics, I can see how these would be useful in the classroom and in a library setting.  As I mentioned before, graphic novels are one of the hottest trends among young adults and kids right now.  Students find them easy to read and are entertained by most of the plotlines.  If a writing form like this gets kids interested in reading and writing, then educators need to utilize it.  Teachers can have kids create comics showing what they learned about a topic.  Students would find this more entertaining then taking a test and would put more effort into a nice finished product.  This is where teachers could use Pixton and the premade rubrics and assessments in order to see the skills their students have mastered.  Comics also give students a creative outlet to express a real-life issue that they might be dealing with, but may not be able to express in a verbal conversation.  As educators, we may not always like the newest trends, but it's important for us to meet our scholars where they are in order to help them grow.