When we took part in the National Day on Writing, my students used our iPod Touch devices for podcasting. It was our first exposure to the devices this year. I couldn’t help but listen in to their discussions and a few comments stayed with me. So, I made a comic, not just because I think the comments are sort of funny (they are, to me) but also because the comments give us some insight into their thinking around using mobile devices in the classroom.
Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin
Somewhere, I read that today’s is National Comic Day. I don’t know what that really means. But I thought I would share this video talk from Josh Elder about using Comics for reading instruction, and the relationship between the writer and the reader when it comes to comics. Elder is also a leader of Reading with Pictures, which is publishing an interesting anthology of writers remembering how they began to learn to read with comics.
“With a comic, the moment you open it up, you’re in that story … you’re in that world.” — Elder.
Peace (in the frames),
Kevin
I took my homeroom students onto our Bitstrips for Schools account and we worked (work? naw. we played) on creating avatars so that we could create a webcomic version of our classroom. Note to reader: my students don’t look quite as strange as this. Or at least, they didn’t last week …
Peace (on the funny page),
Kevin
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I would think of this collection of traditional nursery rhymes re-imagined by 50 graphic novelists. But I trust the First Second Books to do interesting things, and so, I sat down with my youngest son to give Nursery Rhyme Comics a look. Well, it certainly is interesting and slightly off-kilter and fun, too. My son and I were giggling as we read together.
As Leonard S. Marcus notes in his introduction to this witty graphic collection, “The comics we discover in these pages are new-made fantasies spun from the whole cloth of fantasies we thought we knew, the old-chestnut rhymes that beguile in part by sounding so emphatically clear about themselves while in fact leaving everything to our imagination.”
That’s for sure.
There is whimsy here, and lovely artwork from artists such as Roz Chast and Gene Yang and Richard Thompson and Jules Feiffer, and the stories that unfold in the graphics here enhance or even replace the traditional nursery rhymes. Let 50 graphic novels and comic artists run amok with tradition and what you get is a chaotic wonderment such as Nursery Rhyme Comics. Each “story” is only a page or two — no more than three — and it’s hard to believe that the artist’s style could be established in such a short amount of time, but it is.
I’m not sure who the audience is for this collection but I imagine some elementary students would get a kick of the re-envisioning of traditional nursery rhymes (some of which I had never even heard and had a difficult time singing to my son — I had made up plenty of my own melodies — somehow, I don’t think the artists here would mind all that much).
Peace (in the frames),
Kevin
I don’t care if you teach preschool or college or anywhere in-between. I would advise you to become a regular reader of Cul de Sac, a comic strip of such gentle humor by Richard Thompson that it will have you remembering the crazy innocence of growing up or maybe reminding you of how your students see the world, even if it is slightly skewed.
In either case, your foray into the worldview of a preschool girl — Alice Otterloop – and her older brother — Peter — will remind you (as it reminds me) that kids see the world very differently than we do as adults. As a teacher, I need that reminder. Often.
Thompson plays with perspective on all sorts of levels — in his drawings (check out dad’s undersized car), overheard conversations (where misheard words at the dinner table lead to interesting conversations), to the mysterious worlds of the kids’ teachers. And here, something as simple as a raised drain-hole cover can become the neighborhood stage for dance recitals, speeches and all sorts of drama (take that, you imagination-sucking mobile device!). It’s a world prone to dispute, but never malice. Kids here argue with the odd logic of kids, but then find a way (often with no adults involved) to resolve their differences.
Unfortunately, I only get to read Cul de Sac in my Sunday newspaper because the local daily paper doesn’t carry it (why not? why the heck not!!). I do read it online now and then, but I can’t see to fit reading of comics into my digital reading habits. I guess I have other things to read. What is wrong with me?
So, when a book collection comes out from Thompson, I snap it up. The latest is Shapes and Colors and it is a fine immersion into the warped world of childhood imagination. It’s well worth the price of admission.
Peace (in the frames),
Kevin
I am starting to do a little work to get ready for the upcoming school year. One of my tasks is to “archive” the four spaces on our BitStrips community where my students last year did various webcomics. Bitstrips does a neat thing: it creates a “class photo” of all of the users, with their webcomic avatars. I was checking out the four classes the other day, laughing at the ways in which young people ‘create and show’ themselves with webcomic creators.
Here are my four classes, just before I put them into the archive bin to make way for this coming year’s crop of students.
Peace (in the remembering),
Kevin
Scott McLeod, of the Dangerously Irrelevant blog, has annually put out a call to educational bloggers to join him in offering advice to school administrators on the ways of the digital learning environment. Scott hopes that by bringing more administrators into the fold, the more likely it is that substantial changes will take place in the schools where they lead. I agree.
Today is Leadership Day and if you follow Scott’s blog, he will no doubt be posting a link to all of the blog posts that are being shared on this day. Here is mine, done as a comic. Now I know that not everyone is going to take my messages here seriously, because it is a comic. But I suspect there will be a lot of different posts with writing only, so I wanted to go in a different direction. I tried to put some of the ideas that I have heard from my students into the comic strip, as best as I could.
or see it here as a full-page comic. (You can also view it directly on Flickr):
Peace (in the influence),
Kevin
I spent 99 cents to get my head plastered into a Dilbert Comic Strip. Was it worth it? Heck, yeah, particularly since writing was the theme of this comic strip. Although, that sounds nothing like me. Does it?
See the animated video of the comic.
Peace (on the strip),
Kevin
We recently finished up The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi. It’s a book that is quite challenging for my sixth graders — difficult vocabulary, twisting plot arcs, a vernacular that feels strange on their tongue. But it is such a great book and full of so many things to talk about: race, class, gender, foreshadowing, character development, etc.
In order to help them visualize some of the more intense action scenes of mutiny, punishment, challenge and confrontation, I had my students draw some comics. What I found is that by giving them a fun, simple way to “see” the action, they seemed to better understand the consequences of the scenes.
So, until a movie version of the book gets made, we have some comics:
Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin