Both enjoyable and meaningful?

souce of the image

Hello everyone!

It’s been a long time to share new tools. Today I am going to introduce you a useful tool. In the class we have presented this tool with my partner Neslihan Civelek. Let us learn about this more in detail.

This tool is a website Bitsrips. With the help of this site what we can do? This is the very logical question. This site helps you to create your own character and avatars also comics. Basically these three are used but you can see lots of comics which are made by other users you can also use them for your classroom activities even you have not an account. But if you want to create a new comic, character or avatar and save them, you should have an account. I will show how to create one but first I am going to explain step by step what can we do with screenshots and then I have lots of ideas what can we do with this site.

As you see, even if I did not sign up first 

I could see some comics which were made by other users.

You can see the sharing options at the bottom of the comic.

Let us begin with creating character. As you see, there are lots of options which are easy to understand. You should begin with selecting gender. Then you can move on and finish your character. As I said before you should sign up for being able to save your character. Your characters will be seen on your profile page.

At the top of the page you can see options such as; hair color or type, eyebrow style, eye type, color etc.

Here is the profile page.
You can see the options like 'my characters, strips, scenes, favorite friends'
You can find your friends via e-mail. and visit their pages.

For creating a new comic you begin with selecting your panel number then stage and characters as you want you can want whatever you want according to your topic. You can add text bubbles. There are lots of opportunities which are waiting for you. You can just pick one of them and enjoy.

After choosing the scene, you can add a character and change it's clothing

You can add text bubbles as you wish

Here is the example of a comic

You did all these things and what then? How can we integrate these into our teaching? What if they don’t work? First we cannot know what happens without any attempt to try. We should know how to. Let us think some activities.

Everyone knows remembering vocabulary, idioms, proverbs is difficult.  As a teacher you can create a comic which is included a vocabulary with the right scene and text bubble. Share on your blog or show them with the help of your projection or print it and give students, want them to use that vocabulary in a sentence. Then that vocabulary will be remembered because using visuals is really a good way to learn. 

After you save your comic you can see the option of 'print' you can easily use it.

The other options will be demonstrated after clicking on 'share' button

You can also want them to create a new comic after giving a topic. This will be fun for them because they use computers for this activity and create new things and easy to create. They will love it. I have some activity examples here:

• Introduce yourself

You can do this from the very beginning of your class for knowing them better. In this activity, students design their character and create a comic strip introducing themselves.

•  My summer holiday

Students practice their skills by showing what happened on the best day of their summer vacation.

• School rules 

Students choose one of your school rules and show their avatar demonstrating why the rule is important.

• Classroom rules

Students consider the rules of your classroom and create a comic explaining their thoughts on the 3 most important ones. 

You can also create an activity after creating a comic: ‘Writing a short story’ again you can share your comic on your blog or print as you wish. After giving a prompt and picture you have created, they can write the rest. This wouldn’t be dull like the other writing tasks. 

What are the advantages?

• Learning is fun.
• Some difficult vocabularies are easy to memorize.
• Creativity is developed.
• Reading and writing skills are developed.
• Preparation time is reduced.

What about disadvantages? I observe some disadvantages such as:

• Inappropriate comics.

I saw some inappropriate comics which have some inappropriate words or scene in the main page. This is not acceptable to use for young learners. We should be careful about that.

• Being not able to sign up with e-mail. 

There is a one option for signing up with facebook. But we see a log in choice as ‘log in with e-mail.’ This is a bit confusing. For example I have not a facebook account but my friend has,so I used this site with my friend.

 I want to share a video which involves comments about bitstrips for schools.

If you want to make you class more enjoyable, different from others then you should use this web site. Even you are not confident, you can start with the comics which are made before. As I said you cannot know what happens before you do. I am sure you will try. Thank you. See you!