Simply stated, Pixton is a social community where anyone can easily create, share, remix and publish their comic strip stories with people around the globe. If you find a great comic in French, you can instantly translate it into English. Or German. Or even Greek. Pretty cool, eh?
There are
three versions: Pixton for Fun (public), Pixton for Schools (education) and
Pixton Storyboard (private).
Pixton in the Classroom
Pixton for
Schools provides students with an active and fun
learning experience. It's also a good way for teachers to tap
into the multiple learning styles of their students. Teachers can
also create accounts for students without requiring them to have an
email address.
Pixton is also an amazing digital tool for students to create digital storytelling projects. In terms of the educational value of comics, the Pixton team emphasizes the following:
- Pathway to Literacy: Instantly capture students' attention and motivate them to learn, using a familiar medium they understand.
- Collaboration: Foster peer-to-peer interaction between students. Or between students and teachers.
- Visual Learning: Reinforce your lesson through the associative power of words and images.
In terms of
teaching, Pixton for Schools has a Lesson Bank where educators can
share their lessons with other teachers. Teachers can also create
their own private, safe and secure
virtual learning environment (VLE) right on Pixton.
Beyond the
classroom, Pixton would be a great way to quickly and easily build
professional development, training, tutorials or other pre and/or
in-service materials. You can learn more about the how you can use
Pixton in an educational setting or the educational value of comics
by downloading the free Pixton for Schools information packet or by
checking out my own Pixton for Schools
101 comic strip.
Conclusion
The Pixton
tool set is very intuitive, easy-to-use, and really fun. If you
browse the public gallery, you'll see all the creative ways people are
using Pixton and your mind
will quickly overflow with ideas.
And there are lots of ways for you to share what you create with others outside the Pixton community. You can embed your Pixton comic in a wiki (like PBwiki), blog, or share a link via email, Twitter or IM. And soon you'll be able to print out your comic too.
All in all,
Pixton is a dynamite and exciting edition to the social web.
Clive and Daina Goodinson
have created powerful and fun learning tool that is bound to be a
popular and powerful learning tool for the digital and traditional
classroom.
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