Rip.Mix.Feed. ToonDoo

For our research project on silent reading, I created an online children’s storybook detailing the stages of internalizing the reading process. That experience led me to think about the immense motivational benefits for literacy through the use of digital story creation tools. As a result, for this assignment I chose to investigate another such tool: ToonDoo. In this small project I created, I experimented with the ease of use of the tool. I also wanted to know if students would be easily distracted by bells and whistles which could take away from their writing and content. I was pleasantly surprised to find out how easy the program was to use and how effortless it was to create characters, settings and add props, speech bubbles etc. It seems as though distraction could be minimized by restricting how much “playing” students can do in the beginning. For instance, there are numerous functions within the tool that can be customized. Students can for example create their own character – right down to his or her eye shape, colour and sparkle! However there are also pre-set characters. So one could instruct students to get their story down first and then should they have time at the end, go back and play with additional features. I think it would be quite neat for students to create their own graphic novel using this program. I am excited to play further! Here is my quick screen shot of my time within ToonDoo.