Comic Strip Maker

Comic Strip Maker is an excellent online comic strip creator that reminds me of Comic Life.  This is a
simple tool to use that lets users, select their background, add text/speech bubbles, add stickers, and much more to create a digital comic.  Best of all, educators can use this for project based learning and integrating digital storytelling into their classroom.

I highly recommend checking out Comic Strip Maker by clicking here!!!

Bitstrips

Bitsrips is a comic creation site that is one of the better ones to come around in a long time. Like most similar sites a user selects a character, background, object, and then provides the text, but what separates this from others is there is an educational portal similar to Toon Doo Spaces. This is great for teachers as there is built in filtering, content approval before posting, and private hosting.

I highly recommend checking out Bitstrips for creating comics in the classroom!!!!



Thanks to the excellent blog Life Feast for the tip!!!

Chogger

Chogger is a new (beta) site for creating online comic strips. After giving it a try it happens to be one of my new favorite free comic creators. While it doesn't offer you all the bells & whistles of a paid app (Comic Life) it more then makes up for that w/ how easy it is to use.

Also, not only can a user create a custom drawing from scratch, they can add speech bubbles and upload photos as well.

I highly recommend checking out Chogger by clicking here.



For a more detailed review check out Free Technology 4 Teachers.

Super Hero Squad Show (Comic)

The Super Hero Squad Show is a new cartoon from Marvel gaining in popularity. They have now released a comic creator similar to Comic Life which lets users pick their own characters and create their own scene. While there is not a ton of features (I'd love to be able to flip characters around) it is very easy to use and should be a lot of fun!!!

Below is my brief example...



Give SHSS Comic Creator a try by clicking here.

ToonDoo Spaces

ToonDoo Spaces is a new domain of ToonDoo, the great online comic creation site. What makes ToonDoo Spaces so great for education is that is exactly what it was designed for. A teacher/administrator can now monitor all content before it gets posted online. There is educational clip art designed specifically for education. Plus, a custom home page can be setup and all user info can be monitored. This is just ideal for education to abide by CIPA compliance!!



This is very similar to what Glogster offers or even Myths & Legends but it is not free. Pricing is based on the number of students you have and how long you want it for. A 1 yr subscription based on a 1000 students is $1200.

For more info on this excellent resource click here.

Story Top

I first heard of Story Top on Larry Ferlazzo's amazing blog. This is another online comic creator/storytelling site which incorporates a lot of Web 2.0 tools.

What separates this a part from other similar sites is it's ease in use and the vast amounts of options you can do once you create your comic/story.



You'll notice from the pic above that there are tabs at the top of the story (My Account, My Stories, My Groups, Share) This is where you can save/delete your story, create/join a group, upload/share your story etc.

I have an email into them regarding their filtering policy as I don't think there is a built in one. However, I believe they have a strict monitoring policy and will only let acceptable comic/stories appear online.

For more info click here.

Pixton

I learned about this comic creator site from the well-heralded Free Technology 4 Teachers blog. This site is one of many where you can create comics online and then share them (Toon Doo, etc.) However, what sets this site apart from others is the educational section to it.

There are a ton of features that is designed specifically w/ schools in mind such as: private rooms/URL's, teacher to student messaging, a "lesson bank" to share/upload lesson plans, etc etc. Another nice feature is that it will easily interact w/ any CMS. For example, you can set your page to private so nobody can get in w/out a password or you can set individual permissions for students to make sure that nothing inappropriate gets posted up online.

I would think w/ these features in place it would abide by most CIPA/COPPA compliance rules. For more info click here.

Below is a Time-Lapse video of Pixton in Action



Coming soon... Pixton comics now animated... I'll post my example soon after... click here.