Whether you regard them as comic books or graphic novels, “sequential art” has emerged as a popular and powerful method for engaging students.  Although in education circles this medium is typically associated with language arts and viewed as a literary genre and/or strategy for enticing reluctant readers, a recent presentation by noted Marvel Comics artist  Jerry deCaire demonstrated that mathematics is the essential key to his craft:

As deCaire notes, “I am convinced when students learn how math plays an integral part in the things they love, such as comics, they are more inclined to take a second look at the subject they are so often afraid of are just simply not interested in…My hope is to gather from the math student an appreciation and even respect for the arts as an equal partner in the world of academia, and to inspire art students to reconsider what is too often a negative response to their core subjects; the art student may be stunned to learn that the geometry in math can be a great assist in the creation of a well-informed drawing or painting.”

While few will ever attain deCaire’s level of talent, students can create fun and meaningful comics regardless of their artistic or mathematical abilities.  As a compliment to deCaire’s visit, our seventh grade pre-algebra students used ArtRage, Comic Life, and Issuu to literally  illustrate some basic math concepts.  After selecting a topic, students were given a quick tour of Comic Life and set to work storyboarding images and speech balloons.  Since Comic Life does not include an image library, students were given the option of using stock clip art (a nice collection is available here) or drafting their own using ArtRage on the Tablet PC.  The final comics were exported and combined into one PDF document, then uploaded to Issuu and converted into an online book:

Hopefully our inaugural, math-based foray into comics will inspire others to explore the benefits of incorporating graphic novels into the curriculum.  For those wanting to learn more, Scholastic’s Using Graphic Novels in the Classroom is a free, clear, and concise resource for teachers and librarians new to the concept. Comic Life is cross-platform and offers a free 30 day trial, and while ArtRage works best on a pen-enabled device, the Starter Edition is free, cross-platform, and includes eight basic painting tools.  Creating one large comic book requires combining PDFs, and although we used Acrobat Professional, free tools like PDF Hammer will more than suffice.

Whatever your resources or experience level, if you give your students the opportunity, you’ll be more than rewarded by their efforts; comics aren’t just for kids anymore, but nobody understands them better.

Posted: 11|25|09 at 6:04 pm. Filed under: In the Classroom.
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