Module E: Ways students can use ICT to create

During my examination of this module, I focused on the website www.makebeliefscomix.com. This website can be used as an ICT tool to assist students to ‘create’ original texts. Creating original texts is useful for several reasons (as outlined in the module) such as boosting confidence, inspiring creativity, improving vocabulary and encouraging collaboration and reflection. www.makebeliefscomix.com is an ICT tool that allows students to create a comic strip. Students can edit backgrounds, insert characters, add speech and thought bubbles, insert panel prompts, add different objects and scenes and edit all these to create a comic strip to their liking. Once students have finalised their comic strip they can print it to keep a copy or email it to share with others for assessment (by a teacher) or review and collaboration (from peers.) I believe that this ICT tool could be used in the secondary English classroom for a variety of reasons. Students examining a text from a different era could create a comic to create a modern version of a scene from their text. This idea could be used if students were studying a play of Shakespeare, students could pick a scene and create a modern interpretation of this via a comic strip. This ICT tool could be used for poetry also, students could be asked to focus on the imagery of a particular poem, and then create a comic to represent the key images of the poem. This would help students to visually represent images in poetry and understand the impact and contribution imagery makes to this form of text. Similarly, students studying a novel could be asked to focus on an event that has impacted significantly on a key character and to represent this event in a comic strip, allowing the students to take an in-depth look into key events and characters to gain a greater understanding. Further to all this www.makebeliefscomix.com is a fun ICT tool that encourages creativity and would be enthusiastically embraced by students. An example of a comic that I have created is below. I found this website both enjoyable and easy to use and would like to experiment with this website in the classroom.