Assignment 3: Comics/Cartoons/Graphic Novels

Assignment #3 Reflection

For this particular assignment, I was tasked with creating a comic, cartoon or graphic novel based on an in class lesson. I chose to create a short comic strip about the basics of Georgia’s geography. This lesson was used in my current 8th grade, resource social studies class consisting of 7 students with special needs, spanning from learning disabilities to autism. For me personally, I used the ADDIE model when I began planning and creating this comic strip about the geography of Georgia. I started by thinking back on the actual lessons I used in class and analyzed their effectiveness. For my specific students, I know that memorization sometimes can be difficult and this was the case when it was time to assess what they learned. After analyzing this, I believe that the comic strip can be a vital and useful alternative to what I presented to them in class to help achieve their memory skills. This also played a huge role in the design of my comic - keep it simple. I tried to simplify the information so that my students could have an easier time understanding and memorizing the information for the test. I used test scores from the original assessment to help develop my new content using comics. Now as far as implementation and analyzing the new content, I will have to report on that at a later date. I do plan to implement comics more into my lessons and I do foresee it being beneficial for my students' learning.

I kind of have touched on this already but I believe that incorporating comics/cartoons/graphic novels into my classroom lessons will alleviate some of the learning curves found with my special education students. A lot of them are interested in graphic novels and anime, so that barrier gets knocked down and I can use their interest in those to increase their interest in whatever lesson we are studying in class. I believe that I could even take it a step further and have my students create their own comic or graphic novel as a way to review before an exam. This would be a fun and creative way to get them more engaged as well. For the comic I created for this assignment, I incorporated 2 of the 5 multimedia elements and principles into the project: text and graphics. For my particular class, they need direct instructions and clear information so that there is no confusion and this is why text is so important for my comic. With that being said, adding graphics gives them the opportunity to not just read text off a sheet or presentation. They can use their imagination a bit all the while getting the important information needed to pass the current standard.

While all are very similar, cartoons, comics and graphic novels all are different in their own way. Cartoons are more of a stationary multimedia item that depicts information via characters and/or graphics. Comics are similar to cartoons but they have a flow and tell a story. They are almost a linear depiction of multiple cartoons. Lasty, graphic novels are similar to both cartoons and comics in that they use cartoon features and storytelling features like a comic, yet they are more closely related to a novel or chapter book. Graphic novels are widely popular at my school and are in the hands of a lot of children. I love that they have started taking classics and turning them into graphic novels. All three multimedia resources can be beneficial in their own ways in classrooms. Cartoons and comics can be used to get across information in a short amount of time, such as a mini lesson or a review for an assessment, while graphic novels can get students more involved in reading and expanding their knowledge base of literature.

For me, this project was a lot of fun and insightful. I enjoyed creating my own comic based on a lesson that I have used previously in my classroom. I also enjoyed the insight it gave me into creating lessons in the future using cartoons, comics and graphic novels more. For me, the most challenging part was deciding which resource to use to create my project. I spent a lot of time playing around with multiple before settling on the final resource that I ended up using to create my comic.