Making students authors of their own interactive Web comics S. Retalis UNIVERSITY OF PIRAEUS Department of Digital Systems CoSy-LLab [http:// cosy.ted.unipi.gr]

Making students authors of their own interactive Web comics

S. Retalis

UNIVERSITY OF PIRAEUS

Department of Digital Systems

CoSy-LLab [http:// cosy.ted.unipi.gr]

{[email protected]}

[http://www.itisart.com.gr]

Lets see what we will see…

About Comics Definitions History of comics Strengths of comics Digital comics- web comics Comics in Education

Case study Design of the learning process

Time for action

Understanding Comics

Understanding Comics

Scott McCloud,

Comic Strips

Manga ...

The Japanese view of the world in Comics.

Different from the American view

Source: “Mang-huh? Comics in your library”presentated by Cathy Kyle, Parma Public Library

Digital Comics- Web Comics Web comics are designed for viewing on the

web Take advantage of the web's unique abilities

Hypermedia & Interactivity & Infinite Canvas

Comic Books are popular!

Movies and novels are now being made into comic books specifically aimed at children

Many popular writers, musicians and creative designers are working with comics.

Google Chrome presented by Scott McCloud.

Educational Comic Books! Kids can learn about history, maths, etc. acquire digital

literacy skills and have fun doing it European Committee published some series of comics in

all official languages of European Union (E.U.), to inform students about the E.U. "The war of berry ice cream" to fight against discriminations and racism. " Me the Racist“

Mayer and Moreno (2002) suggested teaching through computers, presenting simultaneously narration and cartoons

History Of Comics In Education (1/2)

From the early 40’s many educators in USA such as W. W. D. Sones (1944) conducted a series of studies on using comic books in education, providing data for its usefulness

Comics-supported curriculum appeared, while the Journal of Educational Sociology devoted the 1944's Volume 18, Issue 4 to the topic

Others regarded comics harmful ( F. Wertham, 1954) for literacy and eventually the impetus of pro-comics educators stopped

In the 1970's teachers dared to use comic books again such as R. W. Campbell, R. Schoof (Koenke, 1981), B. Brocka (1979)

History Of Comics In Education (2/2) The milestone was set in 1992, when Art Spiegelman's comic

book "Maus" about Holocaust experience won a Pulitzer Prize (Sturm, 2001)

English professor R. Versaci (2001), Physics professor Kakalios (2002), N. Williams of the American Language Institute of New York University (1995) use comic books in their classes

Today, educators at all levels are designing new ways of teaching through comics

Establishment of both undergraduate and graduate programs in American universities

Librarians in the new millennium find comic books useful in luring teenagers away from their televisions and video games (Bacon, 2002)

Strengths Of Comics (1/2)

Motivating. Due to human’s natural attraction to pictures, comics can capture and maintain the learner’s interest;

Visual. Pictures and text mutually tell a story. This "interplay of the written and visual" comics "put a human face on a given subject" → emotional connection between user and characters of a comic’s story, Versaci (2001)

Permanent. “Visual permanence" is unique to comics, while time …progresses at the pace of a reader, in contrast to film and animation Williams (1995).

Strengths Of Comics (2/2)

Intermediary. Scaffold to difficult disciplines and concepts, give reluctant readers the non-threatening practice and to experienced ones inspiration and confidence

Popular. " there should be harmony between the user's on-going life activities and his experiences in the school " Hutchinson (1949) Comic books promote media literacy, encouraging

students to "become critical consumers of media messages" (Morrison, Bryan, & Chilcoat, 2002).

In social aspects students may examine "contemporary lifestyles, myths, and values" (Brocka, 1979)

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=4581832&m=4581871

Educational Comics Projects-Initiatives In the United Kingdom, a report entitled “Graphic Novels Across the Curriculum”

presents an overview of such projects (Gibson, 2008). Mainly English language and literature

In the United States, the Comic Book Project is an arts-based literacy and learning initiative started at an elementary school in Queens, New York, in 2001 by Michael Bitz and now hosted by the Teachers College of Columbia University. Help children write, design, and publish their own comic books as “an alternative

pathway to literacy” (http://www.comicbookproject.org/). The Maryland State Department of Education, in cooperation with Diamond

Comic Distributors and Disney Publishing Worldwide, invited teachers from approximately 200 Maryland elementary school classrooms to encourage students to design their own comics.

Educomics.org is a European wide initiative started in 2009 aiming to promote the use of web comics in education Students are authors of their own webcomics

Creating a Comic Book

Source: “L'atelier de la bande dessinée avec Hergé”

Using comics in classroom: The Educomics Approach Learning goal: multiliteracies – skills for the

comprehension of multimodal meanings and collaborative production of digital stories in authentic context and conditions of communication use their creativity and imagination & collaborate

Pedagogical model: problem-based learning & digital storytelling via webcomics

Students as Creators of their own comics web comics can be uploaded at the school wiki

Tools for Comics

Comic Strip Creators

Comic strip creators allow the design of sort web comic strips by importing pictures and dialogues.

Makebeliefscomix(http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/)

Garfield Comic Strip Creator (http://www.garfield.com/fungames/comiccreator.html)

Cosy Comic Strip Creator(http://www.comicstripcreator.org)

Viewers of educational comic books, ΚΑΒΑΜ by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention U.S.A. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) which presents stories with dialogues and asks the student to express their opinion

Tools for self-assessment, such as the Concept Cartoons, http://www.conceptcartoons.com designed to provoke discussion and stimulate scientific thinking. Children are asked to answer a multiple-choice test in form of unfinished dialogues among the cartoon characters.

Comic Creators as Educational Tools

Comic Life

Source: Plasq - http://plasq.com/comiclife

ComicLab: http://www.webcomicbookcreator.com/

Phases of an Educational scenario Access to material (articles, novels) Presentation & hands-on experience with the ComicLab in the

school lab Planning of scenario and organisation of narration of their story

(Theme, Setting, Characters, Plot-action, Dialogues) in the classroom Access to selected online resources

Planning of action in each panel according to the scenario of the previous phase, transformation of the scenario in comics format by using the ComicLab tool in the school lab

Projection and evaluation of digital comics - evaluation of both activity and tool in the classroom

Upload of students’ comic books in school wiki.

Phases of the Educational Scenario (2/2)

2nd Phase (2h) Explanation of the basics for a narrative plot & Design of the plot on paper

Use of the narrative (or dramatic) plot structure:

exposition (setting, characters) conflict, rising action and climax/turning point, followed by a falling action and resolution/Denouement (Freytag’s analysis).

Narrative Plot Worksheet for organising the narrative plot (Freytag’s analysis)

time/place

Actors

Initial situation

Adventure – hero’s problem & goals

Action, role of all actors

End result from action / problem solution

Another Educational scenario

Part A: Familiarization with the ComicLab tool Part B: Tricky Tracks (adaptation from Bell, 2008)

Introduction: Students read an introduction in a comic strip where the characters of the story that will follow are introduced

Students use a set of predesigned by the teacher incomplete comic strips. They are guided so as to complete them in order to develop a comic story to explain patterns of fossil footprints that are gradually revealed on a video projector.

Part C: Scientific stories Students are given specially structured stories concerning scientific

concepts that were invented in order to interpret natural phenomena. Students are asked to transfer the stories in a digital comic format.

Example of a student’s comic

Kabam

Viewer

Editor

Εφαρμογές δημιουργίας ψηφιακών κόμικς που υποστηρίζουν την ελληνική γλώσσα

CoSy_ComicStripCreator

http://www.comicstripcreator.org

ComicLab

ITisART.Ltd

http://webcomicbookcreator.com/

Evaluation process Evaluation goals:

Whether the learning process was engaging & fun Whether students acquired skills in multi-literacy, skills

in the production of plurimedia (multimodal) stories in authentic context and conditions of communication about multimodal texts

Understood the notion of intra school violence use of language

Toolkits questionnaire and assessments rubrics which value the products of

learning by giving them qualitative characteristics

Rubric – a snapshotCRITERIA EXCELLENT

(1)

VERY GOOD

(2)

MEDIOCRE

(3)

WEAK

(4)

RESULTS

DIALOGUE &

CAPTIONS

Dialogue and captions

promote the

development of plot

and are thoroughly

comprehensible.

Dialogue and captions

are mostly relevant to

the story and are

comprehensible.

Dialogue and captions

were relevant to the

story, though in certain

points they are not

comprehensible.

Insufficient

dialogue and

irrelevant

captions.

FUNCTIONAL USE

OF LANGUAGE

Use of language on the

levels of syntax,

vocabulary, and

punctuation is over

70% correct, as far as

communication of

heroes is concerned.

Correct use of

language in 50% to

70% of content.

Correct use of

language in less than

50% of content.

Many

Grammatical and

syntactic errors.

felt the joy of creation. I want to

use web comics in all courses…

it was a different course

allowed me to activate my imagination

32

Some comments…

Comics about environment

Time for Action…

Part A: Familiarization with the ComicLab tool

Part B: Write scenarios for your own comics stories Use as starting point the stories of ActionAid Write down a narrative plot

Narrative Plot Worksheet for organising the narrative plot (Freytag’s analysis)

time/place

Actors

Initial situation

Adventure – hero’s problem & goals

Action, role of all actors

End result from action / problem solution

Join our community

New techniques for using Web comics in classroom http://www.educomics.org

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThis work has been supported by the RADC project “Raising Awareness on Development Cooperation” which is partially funded by the EuropeAid Co-Operation Office, Thematic Operations: “Relation with Civil Society, Central Management of Thematic Budget Lines NSA-LA under DCI and Coordination” (grant contract: DCI-NSA 2009/202-400). http://www.developmenteducation.org/