Making students authors of their own interactive Web comics

1. 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] {retal@unipi.gr} [http://www.itisart.com.gr]

2. 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

3. Understanding Comics

4. Understanding Comics Scott McCloud,

5. Comic Strips

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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

10. 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)

11. 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)

12. 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).

13. 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

14. 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 

15. Creating a Comic Book Source: “L'atelier de la bande dessinée avec Hergé”

16. 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

17. Tools for Comics

18. 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)

19. Comic Creators as Educational Tools 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.  

20. Comic Life Source: Plasq - http://plasq.com/comiclife

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

22. 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. 

23. 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).

24. 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

25. 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.

26. Example of a student’s comic

28. Kabam Viewer Editor

29. Εφαρμογές δημιουργίας ψηφιακών κόμικς που υποστηρίζουν την ελληνική γλώσσα CoSy_ComicStripCreator ComicLab   http://www.comicstripcreator.org ITisART.Ltd http://webcomicbookcreator.com/

30. 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

31. Rubric – a snapshot CRITERIA EXCELLENT VERY GOOD MEDIOCRE WEAK RESULTS (1) (2) (3) (4) Insufficient Dialogue and captions Dialogue and captions Dialogue and captions dialogue and promote the were relevant to the DIALOGUE & are mostly relevant to irrelevant development of plot story, though in certain CAPTIONS the story and are captions. and are thoroughly points they are not comprehensible. comprehensible. comprehensible. Use of language on the levels of syntax, vocabulary, and Correct use of Correct use of FUNCTIONAL USE Many punctuation is over language in 50% to language in less than OF LANGUAGE Grammatical and 70% correct, as far as 70% of content. 50% of content. syntactic errors. communication of heroes is concerned.

32. Some comments… allowed me to activate my imagination it was a different course felt the joy of creation. I want to use web comics in all courses… 32

33. Comics about environment

34. 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

35. 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

36. Join our community  New techniques for using Web comics in classroom  http://www.educomics.org ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This 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/