Oh, Those Kids!

I've been working with our 8th grade classes using Comic Life to explain how to balance chemical equations, counting atoms, and how to tell when there's been a chemical reaction.  I worked with one class right before break and am currently working with another class. 

The kids have blown away their teachers and my expectations--they've done a fabalous job!  I just wanted to share moments and tips  I've learned from them during this project:

1. If at first you don't succeed...In the first class I worked with, we had one student who just HATED this project; couldn't stand it and wasn't happy about doing it.  But then some of the students "accidentally" found how you could take pictures of yourselves. (We don't openily show them this feature).  The kids kept it clean, so we decided to let them use it.  When the teacher and I causually mentioned it to this student, you should have seen the lights go on!  AMAZING!  The student came up to us afterwards and asked when they would be using Comic Life again. 

2. How do you delete this box?  This was the question that most surprised me during this project.  I had a number of students ask me how to delete a box, a bubble, or a picture.  When they realized all they had to do was click on the box and hit the delete key, they were like "Ohhhh, that was really easy!"  Almost all of them thought it would be a lot harder for some reason.  It just made me smile.

3. Arrow me this.  I had a "duh" moment today.  One of the students wanted to show the chemical equation and wanted to know how to enter an arrow in the text box.  Up until today, we'd been going to Google images and finding an arrow and inserting into their comic, but I knew this wasn't exactly what the student wanted.  A few minutes later, they called me back over to show me this.  --->  Looks like an arrow, right?  A couple of hyphens and a carot did the trick.  Oh well...