EXPLORING TOOLS 2 : MAKE BELIEFS COMIX

Source of the picture

Hello everyone !

Visuals and funny materails are always really supporting in language learning and teaching. As a result of that, in this post I will introduce you a tool : MakeBeliefsComix, which is presented by my two classmates, Türkan and Ebru, in class.

Make Beliefs Comix is a website which allows its users to create their own comic strips. There are a number of characters, objects, scenes and speech bubbles. Let’s take a closer look now !

This website is free and you do not need to create an account to use it and actually that is why you cannot save an incomplete work. By the way, as this site is completely free, there are ads but they are not that annoying in my opinion.

To create your comic, firstly you click on ‘’Enter Here’’ from the homepage.

This is the main page in which you create your comic.

Then you can start with choosing your panel which means that your comic can be 2,3 or 4 panels.

After that you should decide whether you will use colors in the background or scenes.

Next, you add your characters and you can change the poses of your characters by using arrows.

Also, from the left side of the page you can make changes that you will see below.

Then, add talk balloons or thought balloons and write what you want your character to say. Also, you can add objects, panel promts to make your comic more interesting.

When you complete your comic, do not forget to give it a title and put your name,too. Then, click on ‘’Next’’ and from there you can print the comic or save the image to your computer. If you want to, you can email your comic to yourself or to a friend.

The Process of creating a comic is really easy and you can see the comic that I created below :

How this tool can be used in language teaching ?

- Students can create a comic about themselves. For example, they can write about their favourite things to do after a lesson in which they are taught activities and hobbies.

- At the beginning of a school year, you can ask your students to create a comic describing their holiday.

- You can use this tool to practice new contents. You can ask your students to use newly-learnt words or a specific tense in their comics.

- Also, as a tip you can print the templates to use in the classroom if you do not have enough computers for every student to use.

These examples can be enhanced as long as you are determined to teach your students English in a way that they will enjoy and learn effectively, benefitting from technology. MakeBeliefsComix will definitely arouse interest among your students with its fun characters,objects and scenes.

Hope that this is useful, take care !

EXPLORING TOOLS : STORYBIRD

Hello everyone !

My friend Ecem and I gave a presentation about Storybird and in this post I will inform you about it and hopefully it will give you some ideas on how to encourage your students to develop writing skills without boring them.

Storybird is a simple tool which allows its users to create visual stories. You can put your imagination into words using different artworks provided by artists on Storybird.

Firstly, you have to create an account to be able to use this tool and it is free. After signing up, you click on the ''Create'' at the top left of the screen. You will see many different pictures and you can also search for certain categories like ; summer,holiday,animals etc. 

Once you choose the artwork you are interested in, you click on the artwork and in the following page you select the book format by clicking ''Use This Art''.

As you can see, you have three options. Briefly, a longform book has chapters and less artwork, a picture book consists more artworks and a low word count and lastly a poem is a single image with selected words.

After choosing the book format (I chose the picture book format to show you), you are provided with other pictures related to the first one you chose. You drag other pictures as you write the story, adding pages.

Also, for the cover of your book, you have four different options.

When you complete your story, you click on ''Save and Exit'' and publish it. You can share your story privately or publicly. You can write a summary of your story. You can always edit your story,too.

To share your story, again from the top left of the page, you click on ''You'' and then ''Your Stuff''. After selecting your story, there is a share button. If your book is private you can share it via e-mail or with its link. If your book is public, you can also share you story on social networks.

The final product can be printed or downloaded as PDF but you have to pay for these options.

We created a picture book story for our presentation,too. As our story is private, I can't embed it here but I will share the link of it : Precious Love

Longform book example

Poetry Example

How this tool can be used in language teaching ?

- Firstly, teachers can create a class system on storybird and give students a class code so that they can work together.

- As a teacher, one can upload a specific picture and then ask students to create a story based on this picture. You can also specify a theme for them.

- Students can create their novel stories. After choosing a picture from the Storybird collection, students can build a story around the pictures which are related to first chosen one.

- A teacher can start writing a part of the story and then ask students to continue writing on it respectively. This is also possible for a student, he/she can begin with one sentence and others continue.

- They can be given certain words to create a poem, using a related picture. For example, you can ask them to choose an emotion and create a poem describing it.

- Students can be organized in pairs and then they can write two different stories. Students can invite one another to their stories. After finishing it, students can edit each others story and also comment on it what they like or don’t like about it. They can find each others mistakes like grammatical ones or misspelled words.

Storybird is a really fun and effective tool for students to develop creative thinking and writing skills.They learn how to write a story, like story flow or using descriptive language for stories in the target language. Also it encourages collaborative working and students become connected with each other which creates a more comfortable learning environment. So give it a try if you have not yet !

I hope that this is helpful, I will be talking about another useful tool in my next post, do not forget to check it !