Purely Paperless recently reviewed Comic Life for iOS! Woo!

We always love to get feedback from users, and our education users certainly put Comic Life for iOS through the paces. Take a look at how Comic Life for iOS measures up.

 

App: Comic Life

Cost: $4.99

Why Buy?Comic Life is a terrific comic-making app that allows students to use their own pictures and text to populate a comic strip. The app provides students with a number of attractive pre-made templates or students can start with a blank slate.

The app uses a simple touch interface to edit and modify images and text. Students can easily resize, change, or rotate images. In addition to the basic template, students can also add a variety of thought and speech bubbles to make their comic strip really come to life.

One feature of this app that I really love is the “In Tray” feature. If you are utilizing this app in a multi-device classroom and all of the devices are connected to the same Wifi network, you can select the “In Tray” feature. Using this feature, students can quickly and easily share their comics with one another right from within the app.

When your comics are finished, share them with the world via social media, email, or your iOS device Camera Roll. Using the email feature in Evernote, you can quickly send student work samples right to your Evernote account to file into student portfolios. Easy peasy.

Video Tutorial:

Common Core Uses:

Part of the fun of teaching, in my opinion, is finding ways to use these tools to meet your standards and enhance instruction. Here are a few thoughts and suggestions:

• CC Writing: Narrative- a great way for students to share about an event, vacation, trip, classroom experience, or something totally fiction!
• Language: L.2.2c- Contractions- or any other specific grammar piece. For instance, students could be challenged to utilize figurative language or even try adding adverbs to spice up their writing.
• Digital Publishing- Throughout the CCSS, teachers are asked to provide their students with opportunities to publish their writing using digital tools. Comic Life is an easy start!

In my Classroom: 

I have always taught contractions using comics. Throughout the year, I collect examples of comic strips from the paper that use contractions. Truthfully, they’re not difficult to find. We talk about how in a comic strip, space is limited, so authors use contractions to shorten their text. Pre-iPad or and if I can’t work out the iPad time, I have used ReadWriteThink’s Comic Creator, while it definitely served the purpose, Comic Life is really great because there is far more flexibility and creativity involved. Also, the sharing options are AWESOME!