USING COMICS IN THE CLASSROOM

Our students deal with many of the same emotions as adults. Children get angry, nervous, sad, embarrassed, happy, frustrated and insecure, but they often do not have the words to talk about how they are feeling or are too shy to express themselves. Comics are a thoughtful and accessible medium which appeals to students of all personalities. They offer a creative way for a reserved student to contribute his or her valuable thoughts and stories, which might otherwise be missed.

Our teacher MªJesús has asked us to create a comic in order to help our students to feel more confident with our subjects. She proposed several tools to create the comic. They are:
-Pixton: https://www.pixton.com
-Creaza: https://www.creaza.com/frontpage
-StoryboardThat: http://www.storyboardthat.com

I chose Storyboardthat. This app is very easy to use. The program provides pre-made scenes which can be easily customizable, characters, text boxes, shapes and other images to choose from. You can drag and drop these items into your chosen layout. Scenes are organized into locational and thematic categories (e.g. school). Characters are organized similarly and can be customized with hair color, eye color, emotions, gestures and other edits. Text boxes allow the student to give a voice to their characters. Shapes and additional images add props to the story.

The disadvantages of using StoryboardThat are it only contains still images (video is not supported) and that you are limited to the stock characters and scenes (unless you pay).

StoryboardThat is a great tool that teachers can use in class with their students. I will definitely use it!

Here is my comic. It was created for my 6th graders.


Made with Storyboard That

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