Comics in the Classroom

First I would like to give a summary of Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes’ graphic novel Secret Coders. The book demonstrates elementary coding concepts, such as the nature of a program and how to count binary numbers, through the story of a high school girl named Hopper. She befriends Eni, the son of a software engineer, and they solve some of the school’s mysteries (such as four-eyed birds and a locked shed) by using programming concepts. Second was Gene Luen Yang’s TED talk, “Comics belong in the classroom,” in which he describes how his passion for comics led him to try and bring them into the math classes that he was teaching. He would create comics for lessons, and they were both effective and popular because students enjoyed the visual medium and they had the ability to go at whatever speed they wanted. Due to this, students who needed to work slower through a concept were able to, rather than getting lost during a video or lecture. I also read “Tapping into Parallel Universes: Using Superhero Comic Books in Sociology Courses” by Kelley Hall and Betsy Lucal. The authors of this article present a lesson plan for using superhero comics to teach lessons on gender, sexualization, and socialization (due to the differing portrayals of male and female characters in comic books) to articulate a broader message that comics can be used as a valid medium to analyze in a sociological context. Lastly was “The second educational revolution: rethinking education in the age of technology” by A. Collins and R. Halverson. The article describes an expansive list of changes that are occurring in the education system as our current school system (based on principles from the Industrial Revolution) clashes with the more individualized and interactive digital education mechanisms. Because of the vast changes that are occurring, whether schools want them to or not, the authors argue that educators through schooling and through technology need to come together to find a way to reform the current school system in a way that reflects the changing times.

As someone who hopes to one day be a Computer Science and/or Math teacher, Gene Luen Yang’s works were especially striking and impactful to me. I love the way that Secret Coders slips programming concepts into a story that is fun and easy to traverse. In addition, the comic medium allows any readers to go back and redo any areas that they might not have understood fully the first time around. In addition, it is clear that they are educationally-focused, as they leave space for the reader to try the different problems. I fully plan to use this graphic novel in the future, even for students that it might be “too old for,” because of the extremely palatable way that information is presented. This just illustrates the points that Yang made in his TED talk (as is fitting, since he wrote the graphic novel) that comics can and should be used in the classroom. I had never considered using comics in a formal classroom environment (outside of maybe an English class), but now I already have ideas for how I could do it. Hall and Lucal’s sociology lesson plan is another great demonstration of this, although less potent for me in particular. To bring comics into more mainstream education, it is important to show how they can be used in a variety of contexts, either to analyze current ones or to create comics with explicit educational purposes.

I believe that this push for comics’ use in the classroom is part of the shift to technology-based education that Collins and Halverson pointed out. Comics may often be a print medium, but they have many of the same traits as interactive technology education, and as seen last week, they can be implemented with technology in amazing ways.

My question for the class is: do you think there is a field of education in which you do not think comics can be applied?

Web Comics and their differing Forms

  1. Each comic had it’s own art style, but there were also several different ways of moving temporally through the story, which I found very interesting, especially after watching Scott McCloud’s TED talk. The Worm World Saga definitely held McCloud’s view that the computer is a window, not a screen, and you moved through the comic by scrolling down through loosely defined panels. The Crimson Fly comic was interesting because it was between animation and a comic, but it still preserved the sequential nature of comics. Girls with Slingshots, the Norm Comics, and xkcd all simply showed panels in a certain order. I was not able to view the Better Call Saul comic unfortunately.
  2. I would imagine that a big question that they asked themselves was what medium they expected their comics to be consumed. They knew that it would be online, but the more self-contained comics of Girls with Slingshots and xkcd are easier to share with Facebook or other social media, as they are smaller and more static. The Crimson Fly and the Worm World Saga arguably utilize their presence on the internet better, but you have to go to their sites to view them.
  3. The intended audience differs slightly for each: xkcd seems geared towards short, witty comics suited for social media, while the Worm World Saga seems like it is trying to be a comic for new, young comic readers.
  4. Initially, I would have changed the comics, but after taking the intended audiences into consideration I would say not. The Norm Comics seems less visually appealing to me than some of the others, but this is the artist’s style and I think that the artists is trying to communicate a different message than the others.
  5. Aside from artistic and writing skills needed to create all comics, some basic website creation skills are needed for the ones hosted on independent websites. The Worm World Sage requires more in-depth website knowledge to be able to have such smooth scrolling and seamless panel layout. The Crimson Fly obviously requires both comic knowledge and animation skill, and putting them in tandem as the artist did seems very interesting and pretty difficult.
  6. Personally, I like to start at the first comic in the series, because I like to start at the beginning and work my way forward. It makes me feel better to not have missed things in the beginning. However, I can sympathize with sites that send you to the most recent comic, as that is most useful for people who stay up to date with the comic.
  7. I think that the Worm World Saga uses the medium extremely effectively, and that the Crimson Fly does a pretty effective job. The other three (once again not including the Better Call Saul comic) don’t quite utilize the internet browser to its full extent, but I believe that they accomplish their goal of a piece that’s more like a newspaper comic.

Comics and Libraries are Excellent but Underrated Vehicles of Learning

The first article that I read for this week was Neil Gaiman’s lecture “Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming.” In it, Gaiman delivers an impassioned defense of reading and fiction as . The second article is “Freedom to teach: implications of the removal of Persepolis from Chicago schools” by Sarah McNicol. She makes and supports the claim that graphic novels are worthwhile subjects of study in schools, despite their poor reputation. Additionally, she describes the example of the graphic novel Persepolis and how it was briefly banned from Chicago schools. There was backlash for the decision, and while McNicol explains why the book should not have been banned, she addresses some of the reasons behind the ban. She states that the ban was in part due to the school district’s desire to make sure that each teacher is trained specifically to get the most out of a work as complex as Persepolis. Lastly was Scott McCloud’s TED talk “On Comics,” in which he describes how comic books use a visual medium to attempt to access all five senses through various means. He also describes how comics have meaning in what is not shown, and that they describe a temporal sequence. He uses this idea of comics as a largely temporally-based visual medium to assert some things about its translation into the digital age, and how we can preserve the underlying nature of comics.

My own personal experience in libraries was quite positive. It was a safe space to go after school, where I could just sit down and read, write or do homework with no obligations of spending money. I also volunteered a lot at the local library with several different programs and I was able to be a firsthand witness to the power of libraries to inspire students to read and learn. Secondly, I grew up with comics, so I was never afraid of them, but I certainly did not appreciate them as a literary medium on par with novels and poems. I remember reading a graphic novel called Maus in high school, but that was my only foray into graphic novels in classes. However, I read Spider Man and Avengers comics for years and enjoyed them immensely. I definitely agree with McNicol and McCloud that graphic novels and comics have the capacity to be complex and educational, especially from what I remember of Maus.

Image Source: The Guardian,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/27/russian-stores-pull-holocaust-graphic-novel-maus-over-swastika-on-cover

My question to the class would be: what would you look for as a teacher, when searching for graphic novels/comics/web comics to teach in a class (in a subject of your choosing)?

Modern Digital Literacy: The Need for Critical, Creative, and Culturally Relevant Education

The first article that I read was “From Digital Consumption to Digital Invention: Toward a New Critical Theory and Practice of Multiliteracies” by Nicole Mirra, Ernest Morrell, and Danielle Filipiak. It details “a new theory of multiliteracies” that includes showing how digital citizenship and media literacy needs to include production of content, not just consumption. In addition, they call for specifically critical media literacy: they claim that consumers and producers of media must be able to critically analyze the content, creator, audience, and stakeholders. However, their main point is presenting a new theory that leads from consumption to production, then to distribution, and finally to invention. They claim that the goal of critical media literacy is to eventually have the learners practice critical digital invention, because teachers need to provide students with the tools necessary to create and develop new technologies.

Second was Dr. Degand’s “Stereotypes vs. Strategies for Digital Media Artists: The Case for Culturally Relevant Media Production,” in which he argues for “pedagogical approaches that encourage critical thinking in media art production spaces.” He presents “sociocultural constructionism” as a good approach for digital arts classrooms, but that students should also be taught how to critically think about social and cultural biases in today’s media. In order to achieve “culturally relevant media production,” Degand proposes three criteria: instructional methods and theories, culturally conscious content, and critical thinking skills support. Lastly was Erica Halverson’s TEDxMadtown talk about how schools need to teach “creativity and innovation” in order for the next generation to be leaders in creativity and innovation. She mentions “participatory cultures,” places where people are expected to create and participate, and that the result of these (often digital) spaces is that literacy does not only mean consumption: it also requires production. She states that we can include such education of creativity through “a cycle of telling, adapting, and sharing stories that matter.”

This assignment made me reflect on my own experiences with digital media in school settings, and how simultaneously necessary but avoided it was. In my high school classrooms, phones were generally outlawed in classes and laptops were generally discouraged, but we were required to use them in order to turn in essays and homework assignments. My math and science classes almost never utilized any form of technology other than having a class website to look for homework due dates. Digital literacy was expected to be taught in a couple sessions with the librarian that showed classes how to find credible articles on the internet. The Mirra, Morrell, and Filipiak article was spot-on with its description of how digital citizenship is handled in today’s schools: we only ever had assemblies that told us how digital citizenship was about what not to do on the internet, not what we should be producing. While these things are helpful and should be taught, I only ever had a handful of teachers who allowed us to exercise our creativity and critical thinking through videos or websites as projects. My own experience is an example of just why these articles and talks are needed: we live in a digital age and our students are not being adequately taught in schools how technology can be used and how we should critically think about technology.

My question for the class is: what do you think it would look like for a teacher in a traditional discipline (math, english, history, etc.) to take digital literacy seriously and to foster critical digital invention?