Who Doesn't Love a Comic?

There are lots of comic-making tools available to use with your students. Consider how creating comic strips in your class can promote creativity, storytelling, conversation, collaboration, and reading and writing skills. Bitstrips for Schools is part of the Bitstrips site. This component allows teachers to set up a class site. At the site,  students not only create comics, but also view one another's comics and write replies.

Check the site, specifically the Bitstrips for Schools, and set up a class account when you're ready. Experiment first yourself with the site, creating a comic strip you want to share with your class. Your students can view it on the website, or once you start a class blog, you can embed your creation there, as I am here. Use the arrow keys to move through the panels.




You can also do a screen capture and display the full comic as an image.

In the meantime, I've set up a class account, so just let me know when you want to start experimenting, and I'll give you the access code.

Young Children Creating Read-Aloud Storybooks

Storybird is a website and can also be downloaded as an app. Students create their own books by drawing, typing some text, and possibly recording their voice. Here is one example. To learn more about the tool, check this blog post by a kindergarten teacher, Mr. Gomez: Little Bird Tales--Digital Storytelling. After reading through his post, and possibly exploring the tool yourself, would you recommend this tool to teachers K-2? Why or why not? Make sure you have the volume turned up while viewing the story.

• Click to view my tale.
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