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...
Showing posts with label Comic Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Comic Life. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Six Kingdom Posters Finished
Yesterday I finished up the website with the completed Six Kingdoms Posters the 7th grade students made in Comic Life. Last week, I previewed a little bit about this project, which the students had a great time with! They did a little bit of research of some of the kingdoms and used their recall skills from class lectures with others. They then did an image search to find images that best represented each kingdom. I had the students use Safari on our macbooks to send their images straight to iphoto, which then automatically came up in their Comic Life library. After that was completed, students then went into Comic Life, found a template to add to their page, and then dragged their images from the library to each box. They then added speaking bubbles with two facts about each kingdom. They labeled the kingdoms, added a title and their name and then were allowed to do special effects, colors, fonts, background, shadows, etc.
This was one of the best projects I've done and I'm really happy with the results. However, there are a few things I learned from this project.
1) Have students put their name on it first. For some reason, we had a hard time getting student to put their names on their posters.
2) No matter how many times we told the students to put their information on their poster first, then look at the effects, we still had students who didn't finish because they were changing all the effects. I would hate to do this, because I want students to learn time management and be responsible for getting their own work done on time, but maybe next time I should break this up into two parts. In the first part, students have a checklist (which they had) and they must show us everything is checked off before they can move onto the effects. I saw some great posters with lots of variety and they would have been awesome--had they been finished. There were also other students who went beyond what we asked and put in whole paragraphs about each kingdom or had additional "comic" comments after the information had been added. They were fun to read as well as informational.
3) I would do this type of project again. It took the students about a period and a half to create their posters, but they won't be forgetting this assignment anytime soon.
This was one of the best projects I've done and I'm really happy with the results. However, there are a few things I learned from this project.
1) Have students put their name on it first. For some reason, we had a hard time getting student to put their names on their posters.
2) No matter how many times we told the students to put their information on their poster first, then look at the effects, we still had students who didn't finish because they were changing all the effects. I would hate to do this, because I want students to learn time management and be responsible for getting their own work done on time, but maybe next time I should break this up into two parts. In the first part, students have a checklist (which they had) and they must show us everything is checked off before they can move onto the effects. I saw some great posters with lots of variety and they would have been awesome--had they been finished. There were also other students who went beyond what we asked and put in whole paragraphs about each kingdom or had additional "comic" comments after the information had been added. They were fun to read as well as informational.
3) I would do this type of project again. It took the students about a period and a half to create their posters, but they won't be forgetting this assignment anytime soon.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
My Week, 10/19/09
What a busy week! I keep saying that, don't I? This week was full of professional development and some really cool Science posters!
On Monday, I had a staff session on Social Bookmarking, where I explained to teachers in my building that social bookmarking is a way to organize and store your favorite websites and share them with others. We talked about Google bookmarks, Portaportal, Delicious, Diigo, and StumbleUpon. I haven't quite figured out that last one and really stick with Delicious and Diigo. Is there anyone out there that uses StumbleUpon? If so, why do you use it or what is that you like about it? Come convince me!
The teachers who attended thought this was a great way to share resources! Here are some of the comments they had to share:
From our guidance counselor, Amy:
From one of our 8th grade teachers, Deborah:
My presentation from Monday is uploaded here.
Last week, I hinted at using the program Comic Life for this week. So on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I worked with the 7th grade Science classes using Comic Life to create posters of the Six Kingdoms: Archeabacteria, Eubacteria, Fungi, Protista, Plantae, and Animalia. See what I learned this week? The students had a great time and I loved seeing them help one another with the program. Each poster was truly a spirit of themselves and their creativity-there isn't one that looks alike. They discovered fonts I didn't know about. Three or four students found fonts that looked like animal tracks or had borders to go around their letters for the title. I think all of us thought they did a great job and now that they know the program, we are already thinking of what they can use it for next!
Which brings me to Friday! Well...I'm taking a break and I'm headed to Radford, one of my favorite places and my college. Have a great weekend!
On Monday, I had a staff session on Social Bookmarking, where I explained to teachers in my building that social bookmarking is a way to organize and store your favorite websites and share them with others. We talked about Google bookmarks, Portaportal, Delicious, Diigo, and StumbleUpon. I haven't quite figured out that last one and really stick with Delicious and Diigo. Is there anyone out there that uses StumbleUpon? If so, why do you use it or what is that you like about it? Come convince me!
The teachers who attended thought this was a great way to share resources! Here are some of the comments they had to share:
From our guidance counselor, Amy:
"I think it's great! I'm always finding pages and bookmarking them and then I can't find them when I go to a different computer. These will be wonderful!"
From one of our 8th grade teachers, Deborah:
"I think it will be a convenience to me because I will have material readily available to me whether I'm at work or at home".
My presentation from Monday is uploaded here.
Last week, I hinted at using the program Comic Life for this week. So on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I worked with the 7th grade Science classes using Comic Life to create posters of the Six Kingdoms: Archeabacteria, Eubacteria, Fungi, Protista, Plantae, and Animalia. See what I learned this week? The students had a great time and I loved seeing them help one another with the program. Each poster was truly a spirit of themselves and their creativity-there isn't one that looks alike. They discovered fonts I didn't know about. Three or four students found fonts that looked like animal tracks or had borders to go around their letters for the title. I think all of us thought they did a great job and now that they know the program, we are already thinking of what they can use it for next!
Which brings me to Friday! Well...I'm taking a break and I'm headed to Radford, one of my favorite places and my college. Have a great weekend!
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Six Kingdoms to Comic Life!
I'm working with the 7th grade Science classes next week using the software program Comic Life to create posters on The 6 Kingdoms. I went over the details of our project with one of the Science teachers today and did a refresher with her on Comic Life. We took a class last year together on the program and I learned how to not only make comics, but also change the boxes around to use it as a way to present information. The plan is for students to do research on the kingdoms and find 2 facts per kingdom, plus pictures to show examples of each.
I've started to suggest Comic Life to teachers as a substitute for Glogster, which seems to be blocked at my school right now. Here's the example we did today to show students next week what we're looking for:
I'll give you an update on how it goes next week!
I've started to suggest Comic Life to teachers as a substitute for Glogster, which seems to be blocked at my school right now. Here's the example we did today to show students next week what we're looking for:
I'll give you an update on how it goes next week!
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
We Have Lift Off!
For the last few weeks, I have been slowly working on a website to showcase the wonderful comics the 6th grade social studies class created earlier this year in Comic Life. It was my first time using iweb to create a website and I've got to say it's very nice and very slick. I'm so used to Dreamweaver and clicking links and buttons, and sometimes having to type in html code. But this was really super easy, basically just dragging in the photos and files I wanted and placing them on the page. iweb does the hard stuff, such as making links for you. It was just finding the time to put it all together, which is what took me so long. However, today I accomplished my mission and one of my goals for the year. It would be great, if I could make a site just for our middle school projects and then have separate pages for grade levels and departments, but that's another mission for another time.
Check out Mrs. Van Husen's Comics Page!
Check out Mrs. Van Husen's Comics Page!
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Comic Life Lesson Plan
A few weeks ago, I talked about the two classes I am taking in my county. I couldn't get the lesson plans to come into blogger the way I wanted then, but I think I have it figured out now. Here's the language arts lesson I created for Comic Life:
Unit/Lesson Title: Story Structure/Main Idea
Step 1: Desired Results
What important concepts, content, skills, or vocabulary will students learn in this unit? In other words, what should students KNOW by the end of this unit?
Students should know how to plot out and organize a story and understand setting, theme, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
What should students UNDERSTAND and be able TO DO by the end of the unit?
Students will understand the importance of planning and organizing their stories before beginning the writing process. By the end of the lesson, they will have completed their story.
What SOLs or competencies are addressed in the unit? Are there any cross-curricular links we can make?
Reading 8.5b, 8.5c, 7.5a, 6.4a
Step 2: Assessment of Understanding
How will you assess student learning?
Students will need to complete both parts of the comic series to receive full credit for their work. They will also need to have the setting, theme, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution for both parts and have them clearly identified in the correct place. Students will be graded on content, not artistry.
Step 3: Learning Plan
Learning Sequence:
Hook/introduction:
Students will be introduced to the concept of story structure and plot. To better help them understand this concept they will be creating a short comic series on story structure. This comic series should involve characters describing what rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution are and how the students are going to setup their own story. The next part of the comic series will have the characters describing the student’s plot points about a story they will be writing.
List instructional sequence and timeline:
1. The teacher will introduce the concepts of story structure and plot.
2. The teacher will give students a printed storyboard from one of the panels in Comic Life.
Students will fill this out for both parts of the comic series and turn in for teacher approval.
However, students will work on this one part at a time. They will need to complete the first
part on the story structure devices before writing their stories. Once the teacher has given
approval, students will be ready to fill out their panels in Comic Life.
3. Once in the computer lab, students will be introduced to Comic Life and its features.
Students will then begin filling out the story structure panel from the storyboard they created on the first part of this series only.
4. Once the students understand this concept, they can then begin working on their stories
using this structure. They will again fill out a storyboard around the characters
describing the important points of their story and then return to the computer lab to
complete their comic series.
5. Once their comic series is complete they will move on to writing and completing their
stories.
6. Students will be able to share their completed comic series with their classmates.
Unit/Lesson Title: Story Structure/Main Idea
Step 1: Desired Results
What important concepts, content, skills, or vocabulary will students learn in this unit? In other words, what should students KNOW by the end of this unit?
Students should know how to plot out and organize a story and understand setting, theme, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
What should students UNDERSTAND and be able TO DO by the end of the unit?
Students will understand the importance of planning and organizing their stories before beginning the writing process. By the end of the lesson, they will have completed their story.
What SOLs or competencies are addressed in the unit? Are there any cross-curricular links we can make?
Reading 8.5b, 8.5c, 7.5a, 6.4a
Step 2: Assessment of Understanding
How will you assess student learning?
Students will need to complete both parts of the comic series to receive full credit for their work. They will also need to have the setting, theme, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution for both parts and have them clearly identified in the correct place. Students will be graded on content, not artistry.
Step 3: Learning Plan
Learning Sequence:
Hook/introduction:
Students will be introduced to the concept of story structure and plot. To better help them understand this concept they will be creating a short comic series on story structure. This comic series should involve characters describing what rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution are and how the students are going to setup their own story. The next part of the comic series will have the characters describing the student’s plot points about a story they will be writing.
List instructional sequence and timeline:
1. The teacher will introduce the concepts of story structure and plot.
2. The teacher will give students a printed storyboard from one of the panels in Comic Life.
Students will fill this out for both parts of the comic series and turn in for teacher approval.
However, students will work on this one part at a time. They will need to complete the first
part on the story structure devices before writing their stories. Once the teacher has given
approval, students will be ready to fill out their panels in Comic Life.
3. Once in the computer lab, students will be introduced to Comic Life and its features.
Students will then begin filling out the story structure panel from the storyboard they created on the first part of this series only.
4. Once the students understand this concept, they can then begin working on their stories
using this structure. They will again fill out a storyboard around the characters
describing the important points of their story and then return to the computer lab to
complete their comic series.
5. Once their comic series is complete they will move on to writing and completing their
stories.
6. Students will be able to share their completed comic series with their classmates.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Comic Life and Moodle
I have my next two assignments due soon for those PDS courses I am taking. This week, I am creating a lesson plan for Comic Life for Language Arts. I am thinking a short comic series on plot structure would be interesting to try. In my lesson plan, I have students creating characters that explain what plot structure is, making sure that students know understand the concepts before they start writing. Students should be able to have their characters explain rising action, conflict, falling action, and resolution. Once the students have done a storyboard and created this comic, they can move on to creating another plot structure and comic on their story. Again, their characters will be explaining the various plot points of their story and then the students can complete their stories.
In my online facilitator course in Moodle, I am creating an online professional development session on using Excel Spreadsheets in the classroom. This is similar to the practicum I did in graduate school, but I want to be able to go further with it. I learned a lot from that experience and realized that there were some things missing and I want to go back and have teachers know how to fully use Excel to their advantage. Some of that will time spent on graphing and more interactivity assignments.
Both assignments are due in the middle of the week, so I will be busy! I still need to come up with a rubric for my Comic Life lesson. I will also be attending a PDS session on using podcasts with macs tomorrow, which will be new for me. The last time I used a mac before this year, podcasts hadn't even been invented yet! I am quite comfortable using the PC software for podcasting, but I need to know how to use it on the macs for when our mac carts come in.
In my online facilitator course in Moodle, I am creating an online professional development session on using Excel Spreadsheets in the classroom. This is similar to the practicum I did in graduate school, but I want to be able to go further with it. I learned a lot from that experience and realized that there were some things missing and I want to go back and have teachers know how to fully use Excel to their advantage. Some of that will time spent on graphing and more interactivity assignments.
Both assignments are due in the middle of the week, so I will be busy! I still need to come up with a rubric for my Comic Life lesson. I will also be attending a PDS session on using podcasts with macs tomorrow, which will be new for me. The last time I used a mac before this year, podcasts hadn't even been invented yet! I am quite comfortable using the PC software for podcasting, but I need to know how to use it on the macs for when our mac carts come in.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Comic Life Update
I've finished my second assignment for the Comic Life Professional Development training I am going through. The first assignment was to research some comics and come up with ideas to share. I saw great examples on using the software as a graphic organizer. I also liked the idea of using dolls, clay, and other resources as characters, taking pictures of scenes and then using the bubbles for talking.
In my second assignment, I was to create a presentation. I knew I was doing Classroom Jeopardy PDS this week, so I decided to use this as my presentation. I think it came out well. Take a look and decide for yourself:
In my second assignment, I was to create a presentation. I knew I was doing Classroom Jeopardy PDS this week, so I decided to use this as my presentation. I think it came out well. Take a look and decide for yourself:
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Comic Life
I'm really getting into the swing of things now, so much so, I barely have time to update my blog. I have lots of stuff to add, but little time to do it. I will hopefully be posting more soon!
Today, I started a professional development session on a program called Comic Life. I have heard amazing things about this program and am glad I get the opportunity to get training on it before our mac carts arrive. I also really like the way my new county sets up PD. They use a website called mylearningplan.com and anyone doing PD can offer their classes/sessions on the site. I also get daily emails with new sessions being offered and reminders for upcoming sessions. It keeps a record of everything I have signed up for.
So I saw the Comic Life training being offered by two of my fellow TRT's and jumped at the chance to learn more. Many teachers have already asked if my school is purchasing it, which we are. So this will have me prepared before I go trudging in.
At today's session we learned about the set up of course, which partly will be done using Moodle; something else I have never used before. So lots of learning going on! I think I will like it-I will keep the blog updated with my experiences using it. Comic Life itself is really cool, at least the Mac version is. They've recently come out with a windows version too. You get to pick out templates for your pages, import pictures, play around with background colors, framing, adding panels, twisting and morphing pictures, frames, and adding in two pictures to one panel, add narration and word bubbles, and more. I also learned how to take my picture using the mac with iphoto and dragging the image straight to my pages. You can also take the photos you import and make them look more "comic like" by changing their styles and morphing them into a colored pencil look, a 70's newspaper look, or neon!
In our next face to face session on October 2nd, we will be learning more about creating lessons using Comic Life. My homework....I thought I was done with homework after grad school :) is to research some of the websites the trainers have found and look at different lessons already created. It's due Tuesday, so I'll let you know what I find.
Today, I started a professional development session on a program called Comic Life. I have heard amazing things about this program and am glad I get the opportunity to get training on it before our mac carts arrive. I also really like the way my new county sets up PD. They use a website called mylearningplan.com and anyone doing PD can offer their classes/sessions on the site. I also get daily emails with new sessions being offered and reminders for upcoming sessions. It keeps a record of everything I have signed up for.
So I saw the Comic Life training being offered by two of my fellow TRT's and jumped at the chance to learn more. Many teachers have already asked if my school is purchasing it, which we are. So this will have me prepared before I go trudging in.
At today's session we learned about the set up of course, which partly will be done using Moodle; something else I have never used before. So lots of learning going on! I think I will like it-I will keep the blog updated with my experiences using it. Comic Life itself is really cool, at least the Mac version is. They've recently come out with a windows version too. You get to pick out templates for your pages, import pictures, play around with background colors, framing, adding panels, twisting and morphing pictures, frames, and adding in two pictures to one panel, add narration and word bubbles, and more. I also learned how to take my picture using the mac with iphoto and dragging the image straight to my pages. You can also take the photos you import and make them look more "comic like" by changing their styles and morphing them into a colored pencil look, a 70's newspaper look, or neon!
In our next face to face session on October 2nd, we will be learning more about creating lessons using Comic Life. My homework....I thought I was done with homework after grad school :) is to research some of the websites the trainers have found and look at different lessons already created. It's due Tuesday, so I'll let you know what I find.
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