Ed Tech Fitness

Feel Better, Teach Better

Language Arts

Three Ways to Create Online Comics

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Creating a comic strip can be a great way to get students to start writing. When I taught social studies I had students create comic strips based on historical events. When I taught language arts I had students make comic strips to summarize key points The Odyssey and Romeo & Juliet. If you want to have your students try making comics, here are three online tools that I’ve used extensively and recommend to others.

Make Beliefs Comix

Make Beliefs Comix is a free service for creating online comic strips. It doesn’t have the most features that you’ll find in an online comic strip tool, but it does have all of the features that the vast majority of students need. Make Beliefs Comix provides a simple interface that lets students search for and add drawings to comic strip frames. Most importantly, Make Beliefs Comix offers support for writing in eleven languages. Registration is not required in order to use Make Beliefs Comix. Watch my tutorial below to see how it works.

Storyboard That

Storyboard That offers an education product that allows you to create an online classroom in which you give assignments to students to complete using Storyboard That’s comic strip or storyboard tools. In addition to distributing and viewing assignments in Storyboard That classrooms, you can create templates for your students to follow. My introduction to Storyboard That is embedded below.

Google Slides

Google Slides doesn’t have a comic strip template, but it’s easy to make one with it. Check out my video below to learn how to make comic strips with Google Slides.

Other Options

There are other tools out there that I’ve tried and used at various times for making comic strips. The ones listed above are the ones I’ve used the most. Some other tools you might consider using to make comic strips include Pixton, Book Creator, Write Reader, and good ol’ PowerPoint.

FutureMe – Write Letters to Your Future Self

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Right now we’re still in the glow of New Year’s Resolution season. But what will life look like a year from now? Or two years from now? That’s what FutureMe wants you to write down and have emailed to yourself in the future.

Screenshot of the FutureMe homepage. Space to write followed by fields for delivery date and email address.

FutureMe is a free service that anyone who has an email address can use to write a letter to their future selves. When you write the letter you can pick a delivery date in the future. Then on that date you’ll get an email on that date with the letter you wrote to your future self.

Letters that you write in FutureMe can be completely private or you can choose to have them added to a gallery of public, but anonymous letters. My choice is to keep them private.

Applications for Education

Statistically, 80% of New Year’s Resolutions are abandoned by the end of January. Using FutureMe could be one way to help yourself and your students stick to a New Year’s resolution goal. Since most students change teachers between spring and fall, I’d have students in my classroom now write letters to be delivered at the end of the spring.

FutureMe could easily be replicated by using the scheduled send feature that is built into Gmail/ G Suite email. That feature is demonstrated in the video below.