Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Creative software for teachers and students

I don't plan to use this blog as a place to plug products, but I had to make the exception with ComicLife. I learned about this product from a teaching-artist friend who used it to make a comic "travelogue" of a trip to Jordan that she took with her son. She also utilized it with a Social Studies class for virtual "travel guides".

ComicLife is from plasq.com (which has other great user-and-classroom-friendly programs such as Skitch and Doozla) and is a very simple program for creating your own comic/graphic novel from any pictures you have on your computer. There's a template for anything you can think of, and there are both PC and Mac versions. I had my students use it for making storyboards in Film class, and a colleague is considering using it in her journalism class as part of an online student magazine.

Plasq offers a 30-day free trial; the paid version is very reasonable, so it's worth considering supporting a very creative and innovative company. And if your district won't pay for it, you can always get yourself a copy and write it off your taxes! Here's a comic I whipped up in five minutes, featuring my rabbits:
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Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

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