Pixton uses comics and graphic arts to help build students' art skills, stretch their creative muscles, and help them think critically about sequencing, context, and story structure.
Students create their own comic avatars, and then are free to begin their graphic stories panel by panel. Within each panel, users choose backgrounds and characters and write speech bubbles or thoughts. Many of these elements, like characters, then have layers of details that can be tweaked (e.g., hair and skin color, clothing, etc.). There's a wide variety of content packs that add to these options by grade level and theme. For example, the American Revolution pack includes period dress, key historical figures, and relevant backgrounds. Note that the content packs and premade lessons should be accompanied by substantial classroom instruction, since some of the templates can present one perspective.
Teachers can give students a specific assignment that uses a particular content pack -- though they'll have to do this outside the tool, as there's no internal assignments option. Teachers can also tap into the extensive lesson library for new ideas and premade lesson plans. Of course, students create freely using visual cues as a guide.
For more, check out our review of Pixton: www.commonsense.org/education...
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