Comic Life and Second Life
02
June
Plasq have recently announced the BETA release of a Windows port of their Comic Life software.
I used a few available images from Second Life® drama classes to piece together an example of the output. I then got to thinking about all the possible uses for this software in learning environments. Combined with Second Life®, Comic Life becomes an incredibly creative tool. At the very least you could combine SL Snapshots from inworld events and use the chat logs as dialogues to create engaging documents of events - think of comic book minutes from meetings - people might actually read them!
In a school context there are many possibilities… and cross-media at that! Think of English classes that use Second Life®/Comic Life to create graphic novels; media classes with storyboards and crossovers; science to document experimental procedures and observations (with or without SL involvement); SOSE to represent historical events, to document cultural encounters, etc; what about 3D visual representations of mathematical concepts and proofs?
These are just initial thoughts - but I can see the possibilities of a really engaging set of learning activities with amazing output that is student created. The boon in this instance is that the Comic Life software is incredibly simple to use but the possibilities for creative expression of fictional and non-fictional narratives are seemingly limitless.
1. Skitch in the classroom at Aus Mac Ed | June 16th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
[…] Skitch is currently Mac only and has the potential to be just as popular with students as ComicLife has been. There is demo video from Plasq available. The guys from Plasq are an interesting bunch. Based in Melbourne with a team of programmers in Tassie, Portland, San Francisco and Norway, they are geographically disparate . The web-based sharing tools of Skitch prompt me to postulate that necessity has been the mother of invention in making Skitch. Being able to quickly share notes on screen-caps is a gap in the software market. A TUAW video interview with a Comic Life’s Chris Pearson here gives some background on Plasq too. Fellow blogger Kim Flintoff has been playing with ComicLife and SecondLife together - neat. I’ve used Kahootz in a similar way in a primary school setting - the 3D worlds facilitate a really quick way of capturing detailed pictures to support plot - Skitch could be used to do the screen caps too. […]
2. Patrick Quinn | November 10th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Wow! what a brilliant idea - take snapshots in second life to make a comic… Why didn’t I think of that?
3. Kim Flintoff | November 15th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Hi Patrick,
I’m weighing up whether the comment is being a bit sarcastic or whether its actually a compliment… I hardly thinki its a brillaint idea… just a variant of other things I”ve encountered…
I’m always happy to speculate on possibilities… I’m quite lucky being a fulltime student at the moment that I can attend to whimsy and be extra playful…
I’m assuming a pat on the back is what you intended… so thanks! Would love to see where you take the idea.
Cheers
Kim
4. Richard Horowitz | November 17th, 2007 at 3:10 am
I might be a little lost but is this creating a comic from a virtual world to be read in the real world via the internet in order to elicit an emotional reaction from the inner world of these real life people?
5. Kim Flintoff | November 20th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Hi Richard,
What I was intending is that the comic is a method of presenting a record of what transpired - it can also be creative output and a reflective tool.. all manner of uses depending upon context and the inventiveness of the teacher. I’m currently p[lanning that part of my PhD thesis will be presented in comic form.
It’s hard to tell if you are lost or not without a few more contextual cues to inform the basios of your reading.
Cheers
Kim