Author Archives: dogtrax

Moms and the Desks

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At our Curriculum Night last night, I noticed something: every mom wanted to know where their child’s desk was and then went on to rummage through all of the books and papers and whoknowswhatelseinthere.

Thus, inspired, here is a Boolean Squared comic about the situation:

Peace (in the desk),
Kevin

A glimpse of some Dream Scenes

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My students are in the midst of recording their voices and completing the start-of-the-year Dream Scene digital story projects. They are doing a wonderful job with their aspirations and my emphasis has been on using their “voice” as part of the digital work. A common piece of advice from me to them: “The music is too loud … go back and edit the sound.”

Here are a few of their illustrations, which I shared on my interactive board last night for our Curriculum Night for parents:

Peace (in the dreams),
Kevin

“I want to make a movie, daddy”

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This morning, my five year old son said: “I want to make a movie.”

Well … OK then. We grabbed the laptop, plugged in the webcam and started shooting a Knights in the Castle movie together. He moved the pieces and I clicked the mouse.

We moved the video over to Moviemaker (I took out a few of his hands) and then he narrated it.

This was all within about 20 minutes. I like how it came out. You?

I guess my point is that moviemaking can be easy and fun, even for a five year old.

Peace (in the castle),
Kevin

Where Short Stories Come From …

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As we get into our daily routine of writing, I know some of my students will struggle with short story writing prompts. They need something to move them forward, to spark an idea. So, one activity that I do at the start of the year — and then repeat later on — is to have all of my students generate lists of possible short story titles. They then select one of their titles and “donate” it to the classroom. The title is written on a slip of paper and put into a Story Jar, which we then pull from as inspiration from time to time. I also record the story titles as a document that I keep on my computer.

You’d be surprised at how much fun they have with this assignment. It helps that I tell them that “you don’t need to know the story,” just come up with an interesting title. The stories may come later. Or not. They may never write the stories for the titles they create. I think they like that kind of freedom.

Here are a few that we generated yesterday from one of my four writing classes:

  • The Hole in the Garden
  • Trapped at Ground Never
  • Dead End
  • Inside a Lamborghini
  • The Big Red Tractor
  • The Norris School Nightmare
  • The Continuous Story of Jimmy the Jellybean
  • The Messed-up Play
  • The Boys’ Bathroom
  • The Charmed Pencil
  • Duck Duck Zebra?
  • My Worst Day Ever
  • I’ve Seen Better Days
  • The Hidden Passage
  • The Teacher in Room 201
  • The Pink Flooperbinkle
  • Leo the Classroom Elf
  • How I Got Trapped in our Cellar
  • Locker 231 in the Hallway of No Return
  • The African Alligator Rescue

Peace (in the possibilities),
Kevin

Using Closed ToonDoo Comic Spaces

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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

Boolean and the Smartypants Interactive Board

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I wrote recently how I now have a Promethean Interactive Board in my classroom. Did I mention that not all the parts have come with it? Or that my Mac to run it might not arrive until October? There’s plenty of things to poke fun at with my webcomic.

Here is the second Smartypants Board comic, which returns to Boolean’s obsession with the elusive Dancing Chicken video that he always wants to play on school computers:

Peace (with smarts),
Kevin

Wordling Obama’s Education Speech

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President Obama gives his speech on education today and the White House released the text of the talk yesterday. I grabbed the words and put them into Wordle and created this image:

My aim is to show this to my students in context of the speech and talk about some of the themes that will emerge today. Of course, “school” is a theme but also responsibility, education, and knowing are there, too.

This speech actually is a perfect fit for my first project with my students called Dream Scenes, in which they must articulate an aspiration for themselves for the future, think about why it is important and explain how they will achieve it. We then move over to Photostory to create a digital story, with their voice and their own pictures (from Paint).

Here is a piece of this speech:

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn.

Thanks, Mr. President!

Peace (in speeches),
Kevin