ArtisanCam
By Sara Goldmann, Katie McNulty, Kylie Guthrie, Jaime Pimple, and Ashley Safford
What is ArtisanCam?
ArtisanCam is an online application tool designed to help people create their own comic strips online. You can choose a setting, characters, as well as speech bubbles in order to create a story in the writing genre of comic books.
How Can ArtisanCam Be Used in the Classroom?
Onomatopoeia
This can be used for teaching children onomatopoeia. Common to many comics is the onomatopoeia, and this is a fun and necessary lesson for children to learn. The teacher could do a writer’s workshop with the students and show them comics, and then have them use Artisan Cam to writer their own using various different onomatopoeia words.
Easily integrated
The use of comic strips in the classroom is something that is engaging and exciting for all students. This could be used to integrate into any content area as a problem or as an introduction. For example, we discussed how this could be used for math, and there could be a super math problem that needs to be solved. The teacher could have the comic heroes present a problem that the children need to solve. This model can be used for any other content area, and is especially helpful in literacy.
Creative writing
This web feature is very beneficial to use for the creative writing process for students. They can learn various aspects of storytelling including: story structure (beginning, climax, ending), character development, and overall story development. The teacher can have their students create a whole story with these comic book characters and present it to the teacher or the class. This is a fun and versatile way for them to learn about stories and writing. If they even desire to, the teacher can work on having a collaborative lesson where students have to come up with problems for the other students’ comic stories. This would then involve classroom collaboration and problem solving skills.
How Can ArtisanCam Be Used?
1. Find the website for ArtisanCam Super Action Comic Maker at http://www.artisancam.org.uk/flashapps/superactioncomicmaker/
2. Enter the website by clicking the green “Enter” button at the bottom right
3. Begin the Comic Creation process by clicking the green “Start Your Comic” button found on the bottom of the page in the middle.
4. Now you can begin the process of creating your comic strip, frame by frame. For each frame of the comic there is a toolbox of images to choose from on the left hand side of the page. The first choice is to choose a background setting for your frame, choosing from one of 6 images. Once you have chosen the setting, you can choose from the next set of images on the left side of the page, which depicts different characters. There are 6 characters to choose from. After you have chosen a character, you may also adjust the scale of the character within the frame and the action that the character is doing, or the pose they hold. You can add as many characters as you want. The final toolbox option is speech bubbles and action words. There are 10 options for word bubbles as well as 12 examples of onomatopoeia that can be added to each frame. The speech bubbles can be filled with whatever text the author desires. The characters, speech bubbles, and actions can all be moved throughout the frame, and can be deleted by clicking on the undesired object and hitting the delete button or clicking on the trash can on the right side of the page.
5. When you are ready to move onto your next frame, click the blue arrow pointing to the right at the bottom of the page. Continue the creation process described in Step 4 for all 6 frames of the comic strip. Once the strip is complete, click on the “See Comic” button on the bottom of the page in the middle.
6. From here, you can print your comic creation or send it to the comic gallery.
Additional Resources:
Lesson Plans
http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/painting%20%26%20drawing/art58741
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/buzz-whiz-bang-using-867.html?tab=3#tabs (uses Comic Creator, but can be replaced with ArtisanCam)
Other Resources
http://www.artisancam.org.uk/flashapps/superactioncomicmaker/gallery.php (gallery of comics made by children of various ages using ArtisanCam)
http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/comic-books-promote-students-literacy-skills-5952.html (why comics are helpful to the learning experience of children)
http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/2811 (an example of a teacher using the creation of digital comic books as a learning tool in his classroom)
My Resources
http://www.artisancam.org.uk/flashapps/superactioncomicmaker/
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