Cartoons and Comics

From Garfield to Ziggy to Tom and Jerry, cartoons and comics are a love for all ages.  There are cartoons and comics for every age, subject, or topic.  As educators we sometimes struggle with trying to keep the necessary concepts and skills we must and need to teach relevant and exciting.  Cartoons and comics are a great way to revamp pretty much any lesson for any grade for any subject.  Below I have tried out three different cartoon/comic digital tools. Check them out and see the wonderful ways you can start incorporating them into your students curriculum.

1. Toondoo.com


The comic strip above is a summary of the childrens classic story, The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. I used the summary strategy of Somebody, Wanted, But, So...

Toondoo is a fantastic site for creating cartoons and comics. You do need to register first, but it is free and quick! Out of the three I evaluated I was the most impressed with Toondoo. It is extremely animated and easy to follow and manipulate. There is an immense amount of images, characters, props, etc. for input. The steps for uploading your own images for addition into your cartoon/comic are simple and easy to follow. The only drawback I felt there was, was the limited amount of movements each character could be put in. The movements are pre-determined by the site. I do not feel though that the limited amount of movements truly hindered the creation of my cartoon/comic.


2. Pixton.com












This comic strip was created for a social studies lesson on King George and the taxation of the colonists.  It is also another way to summarize information.

Pixton is a cartoon/comic digital tool that is very high tech and allows you to do so many things with your creations.  I truly enjoyed working from this site, but feel that it is definitely harder to navigate.  There are tons of options and with so many options comes frustration.  It is definitely a cartoon/comic creator that takes more patience.  It is not one that will work for the first experiencers or if you are needing to create a quick cartoon. I can see the potential this site has for students thinking about entering into graphic art or into some kind of illustrated field. 


3. makebeliefscomix.com

This is a free site as well and does not require any kind of log in.  It is an extremely user friendly and easy site to navigate and create your comics.  What makes this my least likely choice is that there are very few options when creating your strip.  You can not change the color of the characters, rotate the characters around, and the selection for images is very limited.  You also can not save your image on-line.  You can either print out your creation or email it to yourself or someone else to view, after that it disappears from the site.  This would be great for my kindergarten son but not for the older students.  Here is the link to my cartoon on makebeliefscomix.com:  http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/Comix/?comix_id=61081270C1333890



I had a blast creating my cartoons and cant wait to begin implementing it into my classroom and library.  I think I will use ToonDoo the most often to complete the creation of comics and cartoons.  My students all have school email addresses so it would be easy for them to create an account.  Comic strips can help enhance the curriculum and instruction by giving students a creative way to summarize information, draw conclusions and make inferences, show what happens in a science experiment, and give great reviews on books read.  If you have other ideas and suggestions as to how comic strips can be used in the classroom and library please share!!