IEP using Comic Life

Increasing literacy within our school systems is of paramount importance. One of the many tools teachers are using to help make literacy more appealing to their students is by allowing their students to express themselves through visual media. Using visual media can incorporate a wide variety of methods from videos and self-made movies to illustrations and drawings to tell stories or make points. Gaining in popularity is the use of the comic book style; telling stories by using/making a cartoon. This form of expression is especially effective for students with poor literacy or English skills that need to be improved or for students that have problems expressing themselves by other means, plus it’s just fun.

The program Comic Life by Plasq is a program designed to help students do just that. I became aware of this visual art program while on my rural practicum in Russian Mission, Alaska. The English teacher, Mr. John Townsend, was using this program in his class to help out his students tell a story. The class had done a field trip using snow machines to go to a nearby community that had a hill used for snowboarding. The class documented the trip using digital and cell phone cameras. They combined all their photos into a single file. Then using Comic Life to access the photos, the students used the program to tell stories (not necessarily true stories) about the trip. The wit, the humor and originality that I saw this program bring out in these quiet native kids was eye opening.
Comic Life is an easy program to work with and with minimal instruction the kids will be able to navigate the program with relative ease. When you open Comic Life, it immediately opens to a work area with a blank comic page. To the right of the page is the resource area; this includes a variety of templates (picture boxes), that you can use as is or modify, below this is an area that accesses your computers photo albums. On the bottom of this window is a selection of voice or thought bubbles along with text styles you can use.

All you need do to get started is select a comic template for your blank page, select a photo and drag it to the appropriate picture box, the program will edit it to fit or you can do it yourself. Next grab and drag a voice bubble to your picture and type in your comment and you’ve started your comic. There are many different effects you can use from text and font styles to background and color fades. Also there are a variety of effects you can use on your pictures so that can take them from a photograph something that looks like old newsprint or an illustration using colored pencils. Comic Life’s Help tab will lead you through all the different effects and styles that are available. Just to make it even more fun, while you are working on your comic, Comic Life has its own variety of comic sounds. So when you are stretching that picture, you get stretching sounds!

Comic Life can be downloaded from their web site for a free 30 day trial and if you find it helpful, can be purchased relatively inexpensively.