How do I Introduce Comic Making in the Classroom?

Comics have always been of interest to children. It generally acts as a distraction from their studies. One way to counter this is to introduce comics into the students’ learning process. This will help make the learning process fun, helping you battle the digital distractions that the students face.

Introducing comics or comic making into the academic mix would help infuse creativity and fun into learning. Students may learn better while working on a project based activity such as this.

Comic making in the classroom is bound to be a popular educational tool with the students. You may get the students to make an avatar of themselves or of what they want to be in life. This would help them express themselves better and would allow even the quietest students or gifted learners, who are not very comfortable with talking, to ‘talk’ about themselves without saying a word.

You may also get students to create their own comic strips, either with avatars or super heros based on themselves, or some other well-known ones. For example: they could rework the story of Spiderman or Batman (and maybe even tweak the costume), or they may create a comic strip of themselves. This may be used as an individual assignment, where the student makes his own comic strip or designs his character himself, or a group project, where every group creates one chatacter or story.

Activities such as these would help develop a number of skills in students:

Conveying an idea

A project such as this will help students express their ideas. It would require them to put words to their thoughts and thus enhance their sentence forming capacity.

Telling a story in sequence

Encouraging students to design comic strips would help them organise their thoughts in their mind, create a storyline and justify their thought process in order to ensure that all the dots in their concept add up to the story they want to create.

Developing computer skills

Making comic strips on the computer would help develop the students’ computer skills, helping them get more comfortable with the system.

Learning design

It would also help them understand the elements of design, a concept that is best taught through practical application such as this. It would encourage them to pay attention to the smaller details of their work.

Creativity

Activities such as these would also tap into their creativity. It would push them to think outside the box for new ideas and concepts.

Decision making

While creating a character or comic hero, the students are forced to make a number of decisions. For example:  How should the character look? What costume should it wear? What colour should it be? What power would the superhero have? This would force the students to make decisions based on their thought process and justify their decisions logically.

Working with others

Group projects like these would force students to discuss their ideas with each other and help teach them to work with others. This is a useful skill for them to learn, especially in a situation where the learning is not obvious, but where the focus is on a fun activity.

Teachers can introduce comic making to students using online tools like pixton.com and bitstrips.com that allow amateurs to create comics without having experience in graphic design.

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Discuss Here: What are some possible projects that you could give students related to comic making in the classroom?