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.

Teens and Technology - A Good Match?

This article is very upfront about limiting teen’s access to electronic media, which surprised me considering that it was coming from a Tech site. I too, worry about inundation of electronic media our school age kids are exposed to and the fact it is coming so fast that we have to struggle to keep up with it (that if that is even possible).

Technology and electronic media is a fantastic learning tool, the amount of information for kids in school is second to none, all the libraries and textbooks in the world rolled into a laptop. The down side is that it is too easy to overdo, taking the teen away from the real world and real world experience to a very isolating, button pushing world where socializing is dehumanized and not face to face. True experiences are second hand.

Parents do bare the brunt of the responsibility for making their teens responsible in the use of electronic media. For many teens, time with electronics needs to be limited as it can truly be addicting for these kids. I had a teen working for me as a deckhand, a good kid. He could not get away from texting; as soon as his duties for getting the boat ready to go were done, he’d be busily texting away, ignoring or passengers who he was supposed to be serving. If I got on him about it, he would just become more furtive (like a smoker trying to steal a puff), until I made him leave his phone at the helm. Then it would non-stop vibrate from his friends texting him. It must have been worse at home, because his parents stepped in and removed text messaging from his phone.

First and foremost get the kids away from it to experience real life; this can be joining sports, after school activities, social organizations like scouts, 4H, church groups or the like. Make the kids go to camp or something similar- a kid is going to remember something he or she did in the real world; be it playing in a football game, swimming in the lake with friends or a family camping trip over “ I just made a another level in Dungeon Delve”.

The article recommends other ways of limiting the affects of electronics; making sure that the computers and game consoles are not hidden away in bedrooms but out where everyone can see them. This can help to avoid contact with inappropriate sites and people. Many computer and game consoles have parental controls for time and language; parents must step in and use these.

The idea of having kids pay their own way for cell phone and texting; will rapidly teach them the value of money and time. Along with rules that limit when a cell phone can be used at home (no calls during dinner) will go a long way in putting electronic media in a much healthy perspective.

Schools are also coming into their own for fighting this over usage of cell phone by banning them to the lockers during class with severe penalties for those who break the rules.

Many teens will rebel against these restrictions but in the long run I feel it serves their best interest as our societies feels its way through the tremendous advances in technology and electronic media and discovers its benefits and its hidden pitfalls.

The Art and Practice of Story Telling

Almost all good stories follow a similar pattern or plot line. Prof. Olher makes this even more accessible to the reader thru the idea of a Visual Portrait of a Story (VPS). You can look at a story as a journey or trek over a mountain or mountains depending on the complexity of the story. Generally, this goes something like this, our hero or protagonist is living his life or the “ordinary”, this would be the level ground. A challenge or problem arises that the hero needs to handle or solve, this would be the trek up the side of the mountain. During this upwards hike our hero will undoubtedly encounter obstacles in his or her way, be they personal and internal or physical and external. This struggle to over come these obstacles makes for the tension in the story. Finally our protagonist reaches the mountain peak; he or she has over come their conflicts. The continuing hike down the mountain is easier now because a solution to the problem or the answer has been found. This represents the resolution to whatever the challenge was, the goal has been met. Final we reach flat ground on the other side of the mountain and life goes on, but because of the challenge there has be a transformation of some type to our protagonist.

Looking at my future video project for our Technology course we can see these basic story elements:

In 1700’s it was commonly thought that life came from non-life or spontaneous generation, the most common example meat and maggots (no refrigeration and no microscopes to see fly eggs). Maggots would start showing up on meat within just a day or so, therefore the meat spawned the maggots, life from non-life and this was the common perception (level ground). Some scientists started to doubt this (the challenge, the uphill trek). How to prove it? (an obstacle). So two pieces of meat were put into jars, then one jar was sealed. The unsealed jar grew maggots the sealed jar did not thus disproving life could come from non-life, but wait said the critics you need air for spontaneous generation, your experiment is invalid (another obstacle and the tension builds). Scientists go back to the drawing board, this time they design and experiment using the same idea of the meat in jars, but this time they again left one jar open and the other they cover with cheesecloth (lots of air but the flies). Maggots show up in the uncovered jar, but not in the one covered with cheese cloth (the mountain peak). So the theory of spontaneous generation must not be valid (question is solved, challenge answered, the downward trek). Life continues as we reach bottom of the mountain, but there has been a transformation in public knowledge.

Great Sites to Visit

Kidshealth.org: I found this site early in my MAT Student Teaching. This site contains articles on a variety of physiology and health related topics for kids, teens and parents. Each age group has topics written to be read by that age group, new words defined and pronounced. Often these articles would be linked to other relevant stories, especially for diseases or disorders; one article would talk factually about the disorder and another would tell a young persons experience will having to deal with it. This would put a face on that disorder.

ScienceDaily.com: My host teacher showed me this site. This site contains a multitude of new science and research news from a variety of sources. This site further topic pages that include: health & medicine, mind & brain, plants & animals, earth & climate, space & time, matter & energy, computers & math, fossils & ruins.

For teachers this a great site to check daily to keep up on what is happen in the science community at large. For students, it is a tremendous resource for research and project articles.

National Science Teachers Association This is a must for the Science Teacher, full of resources, leads and just plain good ideas for the professional science teacher. You can review the first pages, but to delve further into this site you must be a paid member. I have often used this site for ideas for upcoming lesson plans.

Video Projects-"The First"

This is the first video project I have done and I found it like most techno stuff to be fairly easy once you figured out is was going on (Of course, Jason’s blow by blow instruction CD was a great help). I didn’t put any music to my video. I looked at my rather meager selection of audio files, tried a few old rock and rock but being as most of my music is from the 60’s and 70’s, it just didn’t really seem to fit, just made me seem older! Then I tried using Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” as the intro, but being as I found I couldn’t fade out the music when I wanted to start talking it didn’t work. I found the transition to my voice to be akin to someone throwing a cold blanket over the fire.

As a side note, I have a business and for my business I had a company make a film strip like this for me for advertising with the local paper’s web site. The cost was about $700, so there is a side business for someone.

I am reluctant to post my video being as it has pictures of many of my past and present students, if you would like to see this project please don’t hesitate to contact me and I will email you a copy.

Capt. Chris

Antrotech Thoughts

Juneau Douglas High School made a great stride forward by giving all the incoming freshmen laptops, however this has left many of the older and economically disadvantaged students in a technology hole.

Juneau Douglas High School is moving forward in its use and teaching of technology, however I understand it lags behind its compatriots at Thunder Mountain and both middle schools.

It also seems to me that technology is an afterthought in budgeting; this is not going to encourage teachers to use something that might be continuously available.

I have found IT and the school’s Tech people to be highly knowledgeable, friendly and willing to help. I do not know if this is true district wide.

In order for JDHS to catch up in technology to the rest of the district, more money (of course) needs to be placed into buying the current technology, making it available and offer continuous education not only to the students but to the teachers as well.

Capt. Chris