Finally, I came across another site to use with my students and again I have registration issues! This time I was able to easily resolve the issue and complete a simple registration for Toondoo. Toondoo (http://www.toondoo.com) allows users to create, publish, share, and discuss their own comic strips. Within Toondoo, users can use templates with scenes, objects, characters, and clip art to create one panel to three panel strips. Users can also upload their own images and “toon” them into the strip. The very creative and artistic users can do their own drawings.
Toondoo makes it easy to move from one panel to the next with images because they can easily be cloned, flipped, rotated, and resized. Toondoo characters can express different emotions and postures at the click of a button. Much like in ComicLife, users can select and manipulate the speech bubbles. The biggest differences between Comic Life and Toondoo would be the cost (paid vs. free) and in sharing the artwork. Toondoo allows users to mark work as public or private as well as “re-doing” options to allow others to make changes to your comic strip.
Perhaps it is just me, but I could not find an UNDO button within the easy to use Toondoo Creator.
As far as using this tool in the classroom, physics of toys comes to mind. In each Physics class or Physical Science course, students explore in some fashion how toys and games work. If students (and teachers) are going to get nostalgic about their favorite toy racetrack car, why not bring back the nostalgia of comic strips? I would love to present Newton’s Laws of Motion within comic strips. Force and motion problems can be shown step by step within a 3-panel strip. Because comic strips can be shared, I can complete 2 of the 3 panels and have students fill in the missing panel and save or email their work. After learning about each of the 3 laws of motion, students can create their own rendition of a comic strip to summarize the laws. I can see myself creating a Toondoo strip and giving it out as a study guide to the laws of motion. Learning formulas for problems would be less of a pain by demonstrating them in comic strips. Plain black and white worksheets are overrated. It would be great to spice up guided or independent practice with color comic strips.
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Thinking of comic strips always brings me back to reading the comics section of the Sunday paper. That was a great tool to help me learn to read. Integrating Toondoo into a physics unit not only teaches the math and science concepts, but could easily reach students that struggle with reading.
