Digerati Boombati

I had been planning for a few weeks to make a webquest on Zusak’s The Book Thief, as some of you know.  My idea was to create an opportunity for students to explore the power of language, which is a major theme of the book, in some poems, art, music, videos, etc. etc. whatever.  Conceptually, it sounded easy enough.  But, I’ve realized that I don’t know a damn thing about poetry or art, so finding stuff to work with was fruitless.  And searching by titles with terms like “power of langauge” doesn’t bring up anything worthwhile.  Anyway, I’m still interested in working with this idea, just not in webquest form.  Most of the other stuff I thought of using is in book form anyway, so it doesn’t really fit with a webquest as far as I can imagine.  I really wanted to include a digital version of Dr. Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle, since Yertle is a satirical Turtle version of Hitler, but no luck.  I could only get the text part.

So, after seeing a presentation on the program Comic Life by one of my classmates, Laura, who is an awesome teacher and person, I was anxious to get to use the program.  I read a bunch of webcomics on a daily basis, one of which, Michael’s Exciting Life, seems to use Comic Life since it’s a photowebcomic, which I never knew until I saw Laura’s presentation on the program.  Wanting to play around with the program, I did go into the lab last week and do exactly that.  I took the photos from my trip to the NCTE Convention off my flickr account and made a two page comic, which you can read HERE.  It’s not that great or that long, and it needs a better title.  Oh well, though–just a first test run.  I got a copy of Comic Life for Windows for myself, so now that I have a short break before student teaching, I’m going to try to come up with some ideas for designing my own semi-regularly updated photowebcomic involving stories which me, my girlfriend, and some friends or family members will act out—something sort of in the vein of Michael’s Exciting Life.  Maybe eventually I’ll be able to get my students help me with it and have them become contributors or creators themselves.

After playing around with Comic Life, I realized that having students explore the various genres and formats of comics online, since there are so many free and great webcomics to read online, my favorite of which is Dinosaur Comics (I can never plug it enough!), generate some encyclopedia style entries and favorites lists and post them on a class wiki, then create their own comic, using a webquest as a guide, might be a good idea.  So, I made that on Thursday morning before we were supposed to have class.  You can access my webquest HERE.  It’s still a little rough, but I’m going to be adding to it as I think of more content.  Let me know what you think or if you have any suggestions.  I’d appreciate it.