Comic Life - Part II

I went to the second session of my "Comic Life" class the other day. It was a fun time because we all had pretty much figured out the program and had experimented with new ways to use it instructionally, so we spent some time sharing ideas. I realized how much potential this program really has.

Here are the ideas that were given in class...

Use Comic Life to make "social stories" - include real pictures to help kids that have a hard time understanding different perspectives. One of the people in the class was an SLP. She said she has been working with a student with some serious social problems, because she doesn't understand the impact of her actions or how she is perceived by others around her - but with this program, real pictures and thought bubbles to illustrate the interactions, it might eventually make sense. This might be a good tool in working with kids who are bullying as well - often, I don't think they realize how they are making other kids feel. Send them out with a camera and have them recreate and photograph their incident, type in a word bubble with what they said and what they were thinking, and then let them see the other side. Who knows? A lot of work, but it might pay off in the end.

Another idea was to use Comic Life to create a template that you give to students to help them create a project or to demonstrate their learning - one specific example of this was that the teacher created a template with three picture panes. It was titled "Healthy Choices" The students were all given this template and a folder full of pictures that included healthy and unhealthy choices. They had to choose three and insert captions about why they were healthy choices. Along with this idea, it would be great to set up a template that students could use to illustrate or include pictures to sequence a story or an event - beginning, middle and end.

One of the teachers had moved into a portable while her room is being remodeled. She took photos of the room and students wrote captions comparing their old classroom to the new one. This program is great for making comparisons.

Animal reports - one of the teachers had the students find a photo of the animal they had researched, and they used word bubbles to have the animal "tell" different facts about itself. Quite clever - I think the kids would have a great time with this!

Introductions - A parent of a special needs student had a hard time figuring out all of the people who worked with her child. The little girl had a hard time with names, so they created a sheet with all of the teachers who worked with this student and their names, and in what capacity they usually worked with her. It was a nice tool to help the parents stay involved and have a conversation with their child about her day at school. I thought that this would be a great tool to have available for parents at open house before school starts, to introduce them to classroom teachers, other teachers on the team, administrators and specialists.

The possibilities just seem endless.

This program will be part of the new "image" that will be on our computers after January 6th. So, we will all have access to it. I'm looking forward to seeing how we use it.

One thought that I had was that a drawback might be the potential for creating a lot of color printing jobs. However, I noticed how many output options are available through Comic Life - it can be used as a web page, as a powerpoint slide, pdf file, etc. The projects could be displayed through one of these modes for class presentation, or through a slide show displayed on a computer at conferences, making it unnecessary to print them.