Since the spring, I’ve been beta-testing a new site with my students called ToonDoo Spaces for the ToonDoo organization. The open/public ToonDoo site is a social networking site for comic creators of all ages with easy-to-use tools and loads of clip art, backgrounds, options for creating your own characters, tools for compiling comics into an ebook format, and more.  It’s really fun to use. But the public ToonDoo site is not really appropriate for my students, as it features risque humor, language and more. I’ve often used Make Beliefs Comics because it is a closed site. But Make Beliefs has many limitations at this point (but it is free).

So when ToonDoo announced that it was experimenting with closed comic networks for schools, I signed on to beta test it. All spring, my sixth graders (11 and 12 year olds) were fully engaged in the use of our ToonDoo Spaces site. They would walk in the door and immediately ask: Are we going to make comics today, Mr. H? And they give a little shout of “Yeah!” with a fist pump when I say “yes” (after we do whatever other work we have planned).

In the summer, I used the site again with a Webcomic Camp, and again, the kids loved it.

As of this morning, my students had created almost 1,800  comics.  (Yes, you read that number correctly, 1,800 comics.) That’s a lot of writing and creating!

Here are some of my reflections:

THE GOOD

• I love the ease of use of ToonDooSpaces. It really is quite simple to use, both as a user and as an administrator. I had my site up and running in no time at all, added 75 student users in the time it took me to type their names, and we were ready to go. Simplicity is beautiful.
• The closed nature of the site allows you to foster a creative community of writers, without the outside world looking in. And, like other networks, this closed community is not bound by physical space. So you could easily collaborate with others in the world.
• There is a separate site for the administrator, where they can do such things as add elements to the homepage, monitor users, change passwords, block inappropriate comics, highlight comics for the entire network, remove clip art from the gallery that students have access to and add new users in seconds.
• I like the various options that students have as writers. Comics can be collected into ebook collections. Students can create their own cast of characters for their comics. They can even use the drawing tool to add their own art. They can leave comments on each others comics. The site using the framework of a social network, but with comics as the main focus of the writing.
• The clip art collection is extensive and features many different artistic styles. And ToonDoo keeps adding more art to the sites.
• Comics created in the closed site can be easily embedded in other online spaces. You just grab the flash code and embed it. It’s a nice way to move from the closed work area to a public sharing of student work.
• Students have access to the site at home, and many of mine were eager to keep writing at home. You can’t beat that, can you?
• The ToonDoo folks are using a Ning for gathering feedback and offering support. I’ve been trying to post some reflections there as we go along.
• A new filter also flags comics with inappropriate content and allows you to either freeze a student (no one else can see their work) so that you can talk with them, hide the offending comic from sight so the creator can fix it, or remove it from the site completely.

The Possibilities

• I’ve used the ToonDoo Space for Comic Strip Poetry. Haikus and other short poems are a natural for this format, and it really led us into a discussion about “design” and how backgrounds and art must complement the writing and not come into conflict with the words. Some of my students “got it.” Others? Not so much.
• I love that students can collect comics into ebooks (flash-style, with pages that flip). I’d share one but that is one of the bugs they are working on. When I try to embed a book from our closed site, the code reverts to a book from the open ToonDoo site. But some have already created books of their poems and others are creating longer comics by stitching together a series of comics in the ebook format.
• At my summer camp, students were making all sorts of comics around characters that they created in the ToonDoo tool that allows you to invent and create a character. They had a lot of fun with that.
• You can also upload photos and, like Photobooth, morph and mix the photo on the site and then use it in your comic. It’s strange fun.
• This kind of comic creation could be used across the curriculum. Comics could be used to explain a math problem; to investigate a moment in history; or to demonstrate a science experiment. I think there are a lot of possibilities here.

Some Final Thoughts

I think ToonDooSpaces and others are on the right track. Comics seem to be a natural platform for all levels of writers. My advanced students move into complicated stories and poems while my struggling writers are interested in the art-writing element of comics. It really reaches across different levels.

If you are interested, I notice that the ToonDooSpaces site is offering a 15 day trial period and you can use their chart to see how much it would cost to get a subscription for a longer period of time. Whether it is worth it is up to you and your budget. But as someone who used the site and watched my students ask every day if they could make comics,  I think ToonDooSpaces is a great asset to the Language Arts class.

Peace (on the funny pages),
Kevin

I decided to do a reflection on running a Comic Camp for middle school students over at The Graphic Classroom, where I am a staff reviewer and contributor. I hope my reflections are useful to anyone else considering this kind of camp, which really engaged young writers in meaningful ways.

Peace (within the drawings),
Kevin

In the movie camp, they have been working on a variety of movies, but are now focused in on creating a longer Claymation Movie around the theme of a  “buddy/friend” adventure. There are some pretty fascinating stories developing, including one that begins in the world of Pivot Stickfigure and then transforms into the “real world” with stick figures made out of Bendaroos (bendable sticks).

Here are some pictures of some of the scenes coming to life:

In the comic camp, we are doing a mix of paper work and using technology tools. We worked with ComicLife yesterday and then continued to use our ToonDoo site for webcomics. ToonDoo is a huge hit with many of them, and one student is even working on a 100-part series (yes, 100 pages) that is a spy mystery of sorts. I showed him how to create an ebook in our ToonDoo space, so that the reader can follow the story in sequence. Very cool.

Here are a few pictures from yesterday as they worked on a paper comic:

And here are some comics made in camp:

Peace (in the creative world),
Kevin

On a side note, I also came across this great resource for comics in the classroom (I think it was put together by my friend, Glen) with ComicLife software. Whether you use ComicLife or not, this site has a ton of ideas and possibilities, and includes some great links. Take a look.

And now, my students’ ideas:

• Use it to design Quidditch logo (use shadows and shapes)
• You could make a mystery poem; since there’s black and white slides.
• making a comic book project
• make story books
• make an end of the year book.
• We could do something on how to write a poem, because everyone seems to think that they’re so hard, even though they’re really not (especially if you use an online rhyming dictionary).
• for plays
• Have a writing period where we can show what we have made in ToonDoo.
• Writing digital story books for next year
• Next year you could have an adventure comic rather than an adventure story.
• Science-mitosis
• Social Studies-Egyptians
• We could do a story on how your last year at Norris was.
• We could use it in math and make toons to show how to do a certain equation.
• To make your own wanted posters on toondoo about a criminal.
• We could take any of the prompts we have wrote this year and make then into books. I also think it would be cool to make books about things we a learning to help us remember things.
• I think it would be a good idea to use it in writing class but also maybe in literature class. I think it would be fun to use in literature.
• I think you should do a mystery comic strip poem or on the Harris Burdick story. That would be cool. You should also introduce this site to the younger kids.
• I think we can use this site for many different things for ex. you can probably use this for just an activity after MCAS and create a comic strip of what they thought of MCAS and if they thought it was easy or hard for them and that kind of stuff.
• For songs.
• Maybe we can make multiple strips and put them into a book so after each comic is done, it will be like one giant book.
• We could use it to show our favorite part of Norris School.
• We can use them with the comic book thing to create mini graphic novels and of course more poems and our freewrites in our notebooks.
• We could use them to make stories (a short story writing prompt) into a funny comic that still shows the story.
• I think we could make our own book- maybe a story about how our elementary years at Norris have been.
• I think we could use the toon do site for making a book about our favorite thing that we did in writing.

Peace (in the frames),
Kevin

And here is the Making Music book itself:

Anyway, here is this week’s Making Music comic. If you are looking at this in your RSS reader (hey, there!), then you most likely can’t see the comic, so here is a link to this week’s comic, entitled “Six Strings” in which my mom tried her hand at guitar. And here is a link to a ToonDoo book that I am creating with the comics.

Peace (on the funny pages),
Kevin

(PS — If you go the comic on my Flickr site, you can add funny note overlays on the picture, giving voice to the characters. It is now part of the PhotoFridays pool. The more the merrier – come join the fun. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dogtrax/3348124669/in/pool-photofridays.)

From: http://creebobby.com/timestable.html

Peace (in the comics),
Kevin

Here is Scott, giving a great talk at the TED conference. It’s part autobiography, part comic book discussion, with more great insights.

Peace (in comics),
Kevin

I write reviews of graphic novels and comics for The Graphic Classroom on a regular basis as I continue to explore the ways in which image and words can come together for our young readers and emerging writers (I am considering teaching a summer camp on graphic novels and comics — what do you think? Would kids come?).

This week, I grabbed a copy of the most recent Spider-man comic because it has new President Obama on the cover, and the review just got posted over at the Graphic Classroom. The comic is flying off the shelves at comic book stores — a signal of both the allure of Obama-mania and the desire to learn more about the man (and maybe the continued popularity of Spider-man, too)

Head over and read the review of what happens when pop culture meets the comic book world.

Peace (in comics),
Kevin

This week, I turn my attention to the Flat World with my webcomic, Boolean Squared. (And continue to look at the Flat World idea in the classroom for the next few weeks).

Check it out

And here is the RSS feed for Boolean Squared (which runs on Mondays but will move to Mondays and Thursdays next month).

Peace (on the funny pages),
Kevin

But he continues to think about ways to push the medium, and this week, he shared an experiment that moves comics into video, with narration. He has taken an issue — Merit Pay for teachers, and the possibilities of competition over students — and crafted this video. The voices are sort of creepy, which is the point.

Peace (in mixing mediums),
Kevin