Here is another in this series of Children of the Screen comics with Boolean Squared. I thought it would be funny to have the boys use something they learned from Mr. Teach (the Scientific Method) for their project in creating a holographic e-reader. Mr. Teach doesn’t find it quite so funny.
Peace (in the method),
Kevin
This is the third installment of my Boolean Squared comic around kids growing up in the world of screen literacy. With the world awaiting news of Apple announcing some sort of iSlate or ereader thingamabob, I figured it was time to get my characters into the action. As usual, they will take the idea a bit too far.
Peace (in the chip),
Kevin
This is the second in a series of new Boolean Squared comics about Screen Literacy and kids, which follows an article by Kevin Kelly that I read and blogged about the other day. Here, I was thinking how adults (particularly those in the media) always want to tag each cohort of kids with some label.
Peace (in the name),
Kevin
I got inspired to return to my webcomic, Boolean Squared, this morning after posting about the shift to Screen Literacy in my last post. So here is the first of a series of comics about my crew being called Children of the Screen.
After this series of comics, I will be introducing a new character — finally, a girl to mix things up a bit with the boys. She’s a smarty-pants, too.
Peace (in the frames),
Kevin
This is a follow-up to my post the other day about the regional Literacy Conference we are hosting at our school in November that had not one iota of a technology or media or New Literacies component to it. I finally bumped into my principal in the hallway, expressed my feelings about our school — which is innovative in its use of technology — hosting a conference without a single nod to the ways kids use literacy in their lives outside of our classrooms. I told him it felt like an “old school Literacy Conference.”
He was very receptive, and did what I knew he would do. He asked me to submit an idea for a break-out session. I told him that I wanted to be a participant, and not a presenter, but that felt false even to me. If I truly believe in this, then I need to be active, not passive.
It just so happened that this conversation took place on the day when I was filling out a bunch of paperwork for a conference that I have been invited to present at in February in Ohio. As I was describing my workshops for the Dublin Literacy Conference (Digital Picture Books, Using Webcomics in the Classroom and Stopmotion Movie Magic for families), I realized that if I am going to help folks in Ohio think about New Literacies, I owe it to my school and fellow teachers to do the same right here at home.
So, I am going to propose a session on using Webcomics as a Writing Tool Across the Curriculum. My hope is to set up a temporary ToonDooSpace (note to self: email ToonDoo folks) so that teachers can use a ToonDoo closed network site to experience the possibilities themselves.
I’ll let ya know if the school district approves my workshop offer.
Peace (in the discussions),
Kevin
PS — Here a webcomic book sample from one of my students. I love how she envisioned the story across multiple frames. This was not an assignment, but merely something she did on her own time outside of school. In just three weeks, some students have made more than 50 comics on their own time and some have created multiple ebooks. Pretty neat to watch our ToonDoo site unfolding:
