Make Beliefs Comix

I was looking for a simple way to make a comic online and I think I found one. It's called MakeBeliefsComix.com. I had an idea for kids to take a famous quote and and use it as the dialogue for a cartoon. I think this might be a fun way for kids to gather quotes from current news, historical events or famous speeches and think about them in a visual way. How would the person look while they were speaking? What was the emotion conveyed?

It sounds like a simple concept but I am constantly amazed at how kids, even high school aged ones, miss the subtleties of a comment. I see this with my video students as they struggle to convey a feeling or mood via expression or setting.











I wish the program allowed me to add backgrounds and that there were a few more character choices, like a few more ethnic faces, but that's just being nit-picky. I'm going to run this one by my multimedia kids and see what they create.

One note before you get all your students shultzing their way to cartoondom is that they need to enter two email addresses. A link to the finished cartoon will then be sent. Or, you can print it out. Neither of these are great solutions for me, so I will be teaching my kids some basic screen capture skills when we do this activity. Directions for doing this are on the site.

[via Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day… Thanks again to Larry for pointing me to some great resources.]
[Image captured from MakeBeliefsComix.com: http://www.makebeliefscomix.com]
[Cartoon created using tools at http://www.makebeliefscomix.com]