Comic+Life

[|Comic Life Education]

Comic Life provides users with a unique experience to create comics with personal photos uploaded to their site.

Strengths
 * encourages students to create personal projects with photographs
 * wide variety of tools, fonts, formats, styles, and platforms to save creations
 * easy to use
 * engaging through thinking, creating and writing.
 * software is downloaded to computer, so privacy and security are ensured unless students publish to internet

Weaknesses
 * Can be costly; price for 1 Comic Life 2 license is $19.99. Price for a 25 seat license is $199.99.
 * Because the classroom teacher does not act as administrator and does not control the content, teachers will need to monitor progress from each computer.

Opportunities
 * promotes creativity from various types of learners
 * provides students with choice relevant to their style of interpretation
 * educators can encourage and teach students to respect copyright laws through teaching Creative Commons licensing symbols
 * Reading: promotes elements of fiction (characters, setting, problem, solution)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Writing: encourages author's voice and purpose, allows for editing and revising

<span style="color: #de9629; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Threats
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">students may lose focus on learning task while completing a comic
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">inappropriate projects

<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Ideas for Classroom Use <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> I have used Comic Life in my 5th grade classroom and I liked the program. Comics are a great way to allow students to be creative and engaged in content. I was really surprised at what some of my students were able to come up with and I liked how it was their original creation.
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">When students are ready to publish a narrative story, Comic Life can be an option of publication.
 * 2) <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">End of unit celebration
 * 3) <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Raise engagement when introducing a new unit of study
 * Comic Life Update** (by Allison H)

One problem that I noticed while students were using Comic Life is that they were having difficulty navigating around the program, uploading pictures, and editing. Some students lacked the computer skills needed to create a good comic and others did not have the motor skills needed to move around text bubbles and type. Other students had no idea what a comic was or how to use the different types of bubbles to represent thought, speech, narration, etc. Some students were overwhelmed with the many different functions and focused on adding pictures, fonts, and font effects instead of the "heart" of the assignment.

Comic Life is a really neat program, but I think a teacher really needs to consider his/her students and if it is age appropriate for the class. Teachers also need to set appropriate guidelines that allow for creativity while accomplishing the standard/skill that is being taught.

Another use for Comic Life could be to retell/summarize an event in history.