Create Your Own Comic !

Hello everyone !

I am here again to introduce another awesome tool. It's name is MakeBeliefsComix. This site allows users to create their own digital comic strips like the ones that appear in many Sunday newspapers.  Make Beliefs Comix is free to use and requires no login or sign up and also you can download it for your phone. Everything from the images to the text is editable, and users can print the final version of their strip for sharing.  MakeBeliefsComix has an illustrated look, which adds to the enjoyment of using the site. There isn’t a lot of navigation because a large part of the site is contained on a single page. Other pages include the standard “About Us” and “Contact Us” pages. For simple fun, MakeBeliefsComix is tremendous. When put in the hands of a talented teacher, it can be even better. English language lessons will take on a whole new dimension with this site, as students can create visuals to match original stories, or craft the images to fit existing prose. While the comic creator tools are very easy to use, some instruction should be given for younger students, who may need more practice. If you use the site for the first time and you have an difficulty undertanding the usage of site, you can follow the steps below which can be helpful.

                               

                           

Many uses exist for using MakeBeliefsComix in an educational setting. It helps with enhancing reading, writing, and communication skills. It can help with summarization of reading content in any subject. It helps with team collaboration by having groups create comics together. Students can use it for vocabulary by using the new vocabulary words within their comic. This is a great tool to introduce students to creative and journal writing. When students participate in journal writing they can express themselves in writing about their feelings, achievements, and challenges. This tool is also a great way to get students to create a story and add to their comic every day until the end of the school year. You can also use the site to help second language students and kids learning French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Latin; the site accepts words written in those languages.


Parents and teachers get additional help using the site, too. Make Beliefs Comix has a extensive parenting advice section, stocked with family activity ideas and tips on communicating with younger learners. Educators will find numerous resources, including lesson plans that provide literature, writing, and foreign language instruction ideas.


Make Beliefs Comix provides a list of ways you can use site content in the classroom to teach writing, storytelling, and other works. But it unfortunately doesn't save the work in a file on the internet to be opened at a later time. When a student finishes a comix and wants to save it for future use, only 2 options exist: print or email. Another limitation is the color. You can change the background color, but characters will stay black and white anyway.


I am sure educators will appreciate the area of the site designed especially for them. Users can read a lot of ideas sent in by teachers about learning challenges, and activity suggestions, including 300 printable comics with additional space to enter more content, can be used to help students practice writing stories or any other purposes

I really like this site and I hope it will helpful for your lessons :)

Creative Learning Tool "Timeline"

Hello everyone :)

Last week my dear friend Rumeysa and I made a presentation about an educational tool in the our Technology and Material Design lesson. It is a Timeline tool of readwritethink.org. All of us know that timeline is a graphical representation of related items or events in sequntial order and displayed along a line. For example, most of you created a timeline to history class about the historical events or seasonal strip to English class in school years, now imagine how easy and fun it would be to do with technology without strive to draw it. Yess it is possible with Timeline tool. Lets see how you can create your timeline simply !

                                                                               

  

This is the home page, as you can see the tool can be organized by time, date, or event.

After you select your topic you are ready to start. The tool allows users to create a label with short or long texts. Adding an image for each label makes a timeline more visually appealing. You can edit your photo. You can create more and more labels as you wish. But be careful to chose the best one that fits your purpose.

This is the final situation of our timeline that we prepared for presentation. Creating a timeline with technology is so easy that preparing it took about ten minutes and it was really entertaining experience for us.










Teachers may find the timeline as a useful strategy for a variety of educational purposes. It can provide comprehension support for language learners helping them make connections and recognize patterns in a series or process. Because learning numerical markers such as hours, years, days, months, seasons or grammatical structures like tenses can be complicated for young learners at first, timeline can appear visually less complex than pure text, helping learners more easily relate events to their corresponding times. For example: Students can create simple timelines in which they describe a day in their life, or they can describe what happened in a story they just heard or read. Or, we know that there are a lot of students who admire famous people. As a teacher you can give creating a timeline homework about a life of their favourite singer, actor or so on. I think, it is amusing homework for students since it will take less time and they will do it with using technology.

One benefit to creating a digital timeline (as opposed to the old fashioned way with pen and paper) is it’s easy to edit your timeline and make adjustments when necessary. You’re also able to share your timeline virtually via email or social media. You can even embed your timeline on your class website or blog, and maybe even have a special timeline outlining class events for the year that you can update over time with links, photos, and video clips of classroom activities.

We can produce a lot of ideas like these. As a teacher we should strieve to make lessons more entertaining and interesting for students. And it is not difficult with using technology like timeline. I hope this post will be useful for you :)