Something I remember from growing up was reading the Sunday Comics. I would sit on the floor, even before I could read I would look at the pictures and make up stories of what the characters said. As I learned to read, I became more excited to read and share the comics with my family. I even attempted to create my own. Now i am no artist, not even in the slightest, but I still tried. I thought that I could be a comic strip writer, even without any real artistic talent.
Now I am sure you are wondering what this has to do with a Technology Blog. There is a great website that allows you to create your own comic strips and comic collections. The best part of it all it is free! There is also a choice to purchase some add-ons if you want, but as I worked through them I found I didn’t need them. Toondoo.com allows you to create most type of comics. They have single square panes (much like the classic “Far Side” comics) they also have multi-pane comics so people can work with sequence of events.
Toondoo.com allows teachers to do many things. Students learn about sequence of events of course. Teachers can use it to teach grammar in a different way by typing in the speech blocks and having students find what is wrong. If teachers decide to leave the speech bubbles blank students can create their own stories, which engages higher level thinking skills. Teachers can also leave the last square of a comic strip blank to work on inference skills. Having the students fill out what they think will happen and able to back up with reasons why also works on higher level skills. Given time, teachers can use them to create study guides in a more engaging fashion. And even though I say teachers, parents can do this as well.
Here is one I created on my own:
