Cartoons and Comics

I know like most educators, I have caught my students drawing while I am in the middle of a lesson. I have also caught my students reading cartoons and comics instead of the novel the class was reading together. Well I have been introduced to a few websites that will allow students to create their own comics. This is one of those tools that allows students to have fun while learning. They would be great for students to create short stories and and even a creative way to have students give book reviews or history reports. I would love to have students use them to recommend books either on the school website or on a bulletin board in the library.

Makebeliefscomix
www.makebeliefscomix.com

This site is easy to use but is very limited in choices of backgrounds and characters. You can't custom design anything yourself, which was disappointing to me. I was also very frustrated with dialogue bubbles. They were difficult to place where you wanted them.

ToonDoo

http://www.toondoo.com

This site is great!! It allows you to customize characters and has many backgrounds to choose from. It has many tools that allows you to create and manipulate images for your comics.I really enjoyed using the site and would use it with my students.

Pixton

http://www.pixton.com 

Out of the three sites, I enjoyed working with Pixton the most. It had a wide variety of backgrounds, allowed you to customize characters, and was easy to save and download finished comics.