Cartoons and Comics

By ashleysneds | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

The comics on ToonDoo, like the one above, were super easy to create and easy to save! There was a lot of variety of characters and pictures to choose from, however, there were not very many options for backgrounds, movements, expressions, etc. You kind of get what you can find and can't really edit them. Students would definitely be able to use this site. It is user friendly, and I think the graphics are kid friendly.

http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/?comix_id=251762361C1259210

Here is a link to my Make Beliefs Comix strip. I thought this site was more difficult to use. It was hard to get characters to interact and change expression. I think there were plenty of options as far as what backgrounds, props, etc., but not a lot you could do with the characters once they were added. One thing that really drove me crazy was the fact that the dialogue bubbles were never the right size. The biggest one would always take over the characters faces, and the smaller ones weren't big enough for the text to fit. I really disliked the idea of not being able to adjust the text bubble as needed. The characers were also very strange...I had a hard time picking out the characters to use as myself and my hubby. However, I think kids would enjoy this site, because it is more cartoon driven. The characters that you can choose from include animals dressed as humans, creatures, historical figures, kids in costumes, etc. Another downside to this site is that you do not have to create an account with them, therefore, once you leave your comic, you lose it. You can save it to your computer, but it is not as easily accessible like the other sites.



This one was my favorite! I created this comic using Pixton. There were lots of characters to choose from, and a ton of editing options! Once you picked a character you liked, you were able to use a library of expressions and movements for that specific character to make the comic more interesting. Hence why I have my character standing on her head in one part...it's just fun! There were lots of backgrounds and props to pick from as well. One thing that frustrated me was that I could not find characters to use for my children. I could only find grown ups. But that's OK! This site really holds your hand through the process and helps you to make a professional looking comic. I think that students would catch on quickly to this site and be able to use it with confidence.

I absolutely want to incorporate comics into my future as the librarian. I think I will use Pixton to create any future comics. I really liked the site. It was the easiest to use with the most options, and it created a really nice end product. As far as what I will use comics for...for one thing, I can let kids create autobiographical comics like I did. Of course, I would want them to share more info about themselves. I believe students would think this was a neat way to introduce themselves at the beginning of a school year. Comics could also be used for students to create stories based around their vocabulary words. When talking about dialogue within text, comics could be used to demonstrate dialogue and how characters interact with each other. I think as a teacher, comics would be a cute way to tell the kids their warm up each day or something like that. To work comics into the daily routine would provide an entertaining constant for the kids to look forward to. Lots of ideas! I can't wait to try them out!

Online Book Communities

This assignment was great, because I already had a Goodreads account and had not used it in a couple of years. It was a great reminder of how wonderful these sites are and how useful they can be. I didn't realize that there were so many sites out there like Goodreads, and I do believe I found one that I like even better!

I will say that I was unable to do much with Biblionasium, because I do not currently have my own classroom. That site is very classroom focused it appears. It seems like an awesome tool to track your students reading and I cannot wait to try it out with one of my classes in the near future.

As for the other 4 sites, they all had their advantages and disadvantages. I will share about each one individually, starting with Goodreads. What I like most about Goodreads is that it is a great social networking site. This site makes it very easy to connect with people, especially people who share similar interests with you. I also like that you can rate your books, update the dates that you read them, and even update what page you are on if you are currently reading a book. One of the greatest things about this site is that it recommends books for you. If you click on a book that you love, on the right side of the page it is going to give you a list of books that other people who also loved that book have enjoyed reading. This keeps you from wondering aimlessly in search for books without knowing whether or not it might interest you. As far as ease of use, Goodreads is fairly easy. It is by far the easiest of the sites to add bookshelves to! The only thing about this site, is that I think it looks very crowded. For some users, this may come across as overwhelming, unorganized, or even difficult to use. Especially for students, the cleaner and easier to navigate, the better! Here are some screenshots of some of the key elements of Goodreads:

LibraryThing was another site that I tried out. It was easily the most unattractive of the sites. The format of the site, similar to Goodreads, is very busy and can come across as overwhelming. There are some things that I like about LibraryThing though. It is fairly easy to add a shelf to the site. I like that you can rate the books that you read, and that it also shows you how many other people have that book on their shelf and how many people have reviewed the book. One cool thing that LibraryThing does is recommend you to other users that share the same reading interests as you. This is a great way to connect with people with like interests. Another thing I like is that on the left side of the page you can click "Recommendations" and the site pulls up a lot of books that you may be interested in. I believe these are chosen based on the titles and authors of the books that you have already collected. Below are some screenshots from LibraryThing"

Another book community that I looked into was called Shelfari. It was not my absolute favorite, but I did like this site quite a bit. One thing that I really liked about that site was the "Hide All Spoilers" badge. You can click this box, and everything that might give away main parts of the story are taken away. This makes it easier to see what books you might want to read, without finding out the ending first, or anything that might ruin the book for you. This site also allows you to rate each book that you read, and it tells you how many readers have also read that book and reviewed it. Although the features of this site are great, the attractiveness is what hinders me from using it regularly. It does not have a very crisp clean-cut look to me, and it is fairly hard to navigate. I never could figure out how to create a new bookshelf on this site. Here are a couple of screen shots:

My favorite of all of the book community sites that we looked at is called BookLikes. It is the most attractive by far. I believe that this site would be the easiest for students to use in the classroom, because it is easy to navigate, offers a clean and clear presentation, and is the most attractive. Adding a shelf in BookLikes was super easy. You just have to click on "Shelf" and "Add a Shelf" and put in the required information. Very easy! I really enjoy how this site looks. I love the skinny little bookshelves that the books sit on and the large icons for the book images. Another thing that I really love about this site is the features included when reviewing a book. You can put the book on any of your shelves, mark when you started and when you completed a book, rate them based on a 5 star system, add comments, etc. It is easy to do but also gives lots of options. I think that without a doubt this would be the online book community that I would use and recommend for my students. Below are some screen shots:

Now for the hard part...getting my account all up to date with my books and really using this site to it's full advantage. I am excited to get started and see what all else it has to offer that I didn't play with yet! 

Podcasts

I was a little nervous when I saw this assignment, but I had a fun time doing it! I have always enjoyed listening to podcasts, but I have never created one myself. It seemed intimidating, but I found it to be fairly simple. Are you wondering why librarians or teachers would need to know how to create a podcast? What good could a podcast do in education? Well, there are many ideas that I found while working on this assignment. Librarians could use a podcast to promote their library to the campus, to promote new books that the library gets, or to do book talks, reviews, read-alouds, etc. Teachers could create a podcast to interact with their students outside the classroom...create an extension of the classroom. This is what I modeled with my podcast. Teachers could also have students create a podcast and use it as a way to assess their learning. Administrators could use podcasts to train their teachers without having to have several seperate meetings, or to make school-wide announcements. There are many ways that podcasts could be beneficial in education, and I look forward to exploring this further!

I used SoundCloud to create my podcast, and it was super easy! I really like the program, and it has a free and easy app to go along with it for the iPhone. To create my audio file for my podcast, I simply downloaded the app for SoundCloud. Once I had the app, I was able to hit record on the app and record my audio. I felt much more comfortable doing this than talking to a computer. The phone is less intimidating!

Once the audio was recorded, it saved it as a post under my account on SoundCloud.

From my phone, I could listen to the audio file to make sure that it sounded like I wanted.

There are options to share and everything from the app, but I decided to complete the assignment from my computer. Here is a short screencast of what I did once I went to my computer...I logged in to SoundCloud, got the embed code for the audio file, and then listened to the file again! Super easy!

Here is the podcast that I created for this assignment. We have been studying Aesop's Fables in the 4th grade class that I am student teaching in, so I based my podcast on that. :)



Enjoy!