Thursday 8 April 2010

Dennis Hong: My seven species of robot | Video on TED.com

This is an inspiring TED talk by Dennis Hong where he introduces seven all-terrain robots. I had no idea how far robotics had been taken and the robots are fantastic. The part that made me think about sharing this with my class, was when he spoke about the five creative secrets to his lab's success. He talks about the kind of brainstorming I try to encourage in the classroom, perhaps a real life example will inspire my students onward. Dennis goes on further to say that creativity itself is not enough, to support it and follow through you need the learning; lots of maths and science.

Wednesday 7 April 2010

Pixton Click-N-Drag Comics


Pixton Click-N-Drag Comics is an amazing online comic site with a huge range of characters and editable features. You can resize, rotate and change clothes, colours and even move individual limbs on the characters. Backgrounds and objects seem just as versatile. Most comic formats from one row to twelve rows are included as well as a poster format. This is really click and drag storytelling that allows the story teller to explore the visual elements of storytelling.

I am impressed with the easy of use and versatility of this site. I especially like how easy it is to embed your comic creations on your blog or share on on social sites. All this is free, although Pixton also have a pay version with extra features.

While sharing this on Twitter @wmchamberlain mentioned that with the free version students had to be 19, or have parent permission to sign up their own account. There is an education version which bypasses this, but it is not free. As I don't like my students being asked for emails, I plan to use my usual option of opening a class account that we all can use.


Some other comic options are:
Creating Comics in Word written by Jacqui Sharp
Speak Up: good for bully stories and have a downloadable option.
Zimmer Twins creates digital movie stories.
Make Beliefs Comixs
Toondoo
PikiKids uses photos like creating comics in Word.
Myths & Legends 
Comic Creator by ReadWriteThink allows you to create comics to print out and colour. You cannot save or embed though.

Have you use an online comic creator with primary school students? How would you rate it?