Comic strips are key pedagogical tools to use in your teaching. Some of the benefits of using comic strips include the fact they are fun and motivating, they promote creative and critical thinking skills, they can be used with students from different grades, they can be integrated in different school subjects, they can be used in various literacy-based activities (e.g., writing, reading, listening, and speaking), and more.
There are several free comic strip makers students can use to design their own comic strips and cartoons. Below are some of my favourite recommendations:
1. Pixton
Pixton is another great comic strips maker to try out, It is simple and easy to use. It also provides a wide variety of ready-made templates to start with. Using Pixton comic builder students will be able to select backgrounds, add characters, insert different types of bubbles (e.g., speech, thought, shout, whisper), add text, and more.
The ‘Actions’ tab allows students to add poses (e.g., walking, running, pointing, standing, waving, etc). To add more panels to their comic, students click on Add panel in the left hand side. After completing their comic strip they can download, print, or share with others.
2- Make Beliefs Comix
Make Beliefs Comix is a great platform that students can use to practice their writing through generating comic strips. Students are provided with a wide variety of characters, objects, speech bubbles, and thought cubes to use to create their stories. After they are done they can download, print or share their work through popular social media websites.
3- Storyboardthat
StoryboardThat is another good option for creating comic strips. It provides a wide variety of services and options for students to tinker with when creating their comics . The free version gives you only 14 days trial and does not allow you to upload your own images to use in comics.
4- Google Drawings
Google Drawings is another good comic strip maker to consider. While it does not offer as many features and specs as the previous tools, it does have the basic elements students can use to create educational and fun comics. Students can upload images, change backgrounds, insert text and shapes, add speech bubbles and callout and experiment with their storytelling skills.
5. Comic Creator
Comic Creator is a useful tool from ReadWriteThink that students can use to easily design their own comic strips. The tool provides students with a variety of features to employ in the creation process. They can choose from different backgrounds, add characters and pros, and type in their textual input.
6. Canva Comic Strips Maker
Canva offers a comic strip making feature that enables you to create beautiful comics to use in your learning. The way Canva works is simple and easy. You can either search for pre-designed comic strips in the site’s library by typing ‘comic strips’ in the search box or you can choose a blank template to start from scratch.
Canva editor provides you with all the features and elements (e.g., callouts, speech bubbles, characters, images, etc) to use in your comic strips. Once your creation is ready, you can share it using a generated link, directly to third party sites, or publish it online for everyone with the link to view.
