Tuesday, review of the Strip Design app

          From the Stories section I have chosen to review the Strip Design app. I have chosen this specific app because it is fairly simple to use, but I believe could have powerful results for students.
          Strip Design allows the user to choose from a large variety of templates to begin. There are simple templates with only one or two picture slots, and there are also very complicated designs involving multiple picture slots. After a template has been chosen, the user may insert an image into each box or can draw a picture straight into a box. Pictures are easily modified using simple finger movements. After pictures have been added, user can insert a thought or speech bubble and type in dialogue to animate the comic. Thought and speech bubbles can be modified by size, rotation, color, and shape. Stickers can also be added on top of pictures, and even stretching across pictures boundaries. I adore the sticker options that are available! There are special effects, exclamations, hats, eyes, mustaches, moving objects, an option to create-your-own, and several others. I feel like young boys would go to town with the "POW!" and "CRASH!" exclamation stickers, making them feel like they were writing a real comic strip. Pages can also be strung together into a collection to create the comic book effect. Students would absolutely love writing story lines to go along with their pictures and characters.
          The Strip Design app is quick and easy to learn. As I was sitting in the Resource Center fiddling with the app, a couple of young campus girls came to sit with me. I let them experiment with the app as I observed to see how quickly they picked it up, and I was impressed with the results! Without my guidance they figured out how to choose a template and add drawings into each box. They took turns creating a comic of a garden, which I have included below. They also figured out how to add a speech bubble and type in text to create dialogue. They had so much fun creating their own comic, and they only played with it for five or ten minutes. Imagine the possibilities in a classroom setting if students were allowed half an hour to come up with a plot line with characters and a setting. What a creative way to teach students the elements of a fiction text!

Picture by Eleanor Wolf and Charity Davis