This tool allows you to create comics. Students can choose different characters, backgrounds and add narration and speech bubbles.
Advantages
✔︎It's really intuitive and easy to use
✔︎It provides its users with a great variety of characters, backgrounds and features to add
✔︎It's free
✔︎You can send your feedback of the website for improvement
✔︎It's a safe place. The website has stablished rules which must be respected: Comics mustn't be racist, discriminatory or contain hate speech or personal information. Comics must be funny but appropiate, otherwise, an admin will delete the comic or ban the user.
Drawbacks
✖︎ It's limited. Your comic could only be three scenes long, which is ideal for a joke or a really short story but not suitable for a longer production
✖︎ You cannot design your comic entirely. Although you can put together a great story by choosing between different backgrounds, characters and speech bubbles the tool offers, you cannot design those from scratch.
✖︎ The website is quite old (2005) so its layout and design of the different items are rather simple. You cannot add any type of animation or audio.
Conclusion:
'Witty Comics' is an uncomplicated website, appropriate for those who have no more but basic knowledge of technology as it is very easy to use. This tool is suitable for simpler or leading tasks, since its fatures are rather plain. Students can put together a nice story, developing their creativity. However, it's quite oldish and limited in comparison to other more modern and emergent tools we have access to nowadays.
Navigate through the pictures using the arrows to learn how the tool works
Form: Teenagers (14-15 years old)
Level: intermediate
This tool can be used as a starting point of a written task. Students will design a comic sequence consisting of three scenes (a beginning, a climax/middle and a conclusion or ending) including backgrounds, characters, speech bubbles and a little narrative.
Once they are done, they will exchange the images and write a short story based on the 'comic' they got. This story should be 150-200 words long and developed in three paragraphs: one for the beginning, one for the climax, and one for the conclusion.
Inclusive Education
Witty Comics is a really fun tool to use in order to get your students engaged into written tasks, especially for those who need extra support. Instead of creating a story from scratch, which may be too challenging for some students, they can write a story based on the different scenes using the images as a guide. On the other hand, more advanced students can take advantage of this tool by creating or reproducing jokes in the target language and share them with the class. Jokes are one of the most difficult aspects of a language to understand, as they involve puns and double meanings. As mentioned in Special Educational Needs, Delaney (2016), both struggling and advanced students can benefit from these kind of tools.
References to Theoretical Frameworks
PLANIED
PLANIED (Plan Nacional Integral de Educación Digital) is an Argentine plan developed by Ripani (2016, 2017) to integrate the education community into digital culture. According to this plan, there are six key dimensions of competences students need to develop in order to navigate the digital world effectively. Among these dimesions we can point out the following:
Creatividad & Innovación: This dimension refers to the ability to produce content creatively and build knowledge through the appropiation of ICT. One of the objectives of this dimension is the appropiation of ICT to develop imagination and fantasy. This can be done through the creation of a comic sequence in the task previously suggested.
Go back to the index of Assigment 3
References
Ripani, F. (2016). Competencias de Educación Digital. Ministerio de Educación y Deportes. Retrieved in July 2017 from http://www.bnm.me.gov.ar/giga1/documentos/EL005452.pdf
Ripani, F. (2017). Orientaciones Pedagógicas. Ministerio de Educación y Deportes. Retrieved in July 2017 from http://www.bnm.me.gov.ar/giga1/documentos/EL005853.pdf