Masaryk University at Brno Faculty of Education
Department of English Language and Literature
Comics-based Language Teaching in Digital Environment of a Modern Classroom: Cultural awareness projects and activities
Diploma thesis
Supervisor: Written by: Aaron Collier. B.A. Jan Domkář
Brno 2010 Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Aaron Collier who kindly assisted in my endeavour as a supervisor of my thesis. I would also like to thank to PhDr. Irena Přibylová PhD. who helped me with advice concerning the literature aspects of comics. And at last I would like to dearly thank to Pája, without whom this thesis would never be created. Declaration: I declare that I have written my diploma thesis myself and only used the materials listed in enclosed bibliography.
…...... Jan Domkář Anotace Domkář, J. Comics-based Language Teaching in Digital Environment of a Modern Classroom: Cultural awareness projects and activities, Brno, 2010. s. 76. Tato práce je zaměřena využití originálních anglických komixů při výuce angličtiny v prostředí české třídy a s problémy spojenými s jejich zapojením do vyučování, zejména jejich celkovou nedostupností. Autor navrhuje řešení v podobě užití digitálních učebních pomůcek jako např. interaktivní tabule, vektorových grafických editorů a dalších programů. K demonstraci řešení slouží čtyři projekty založené na použití komixů a digitálních telcnilogií a dále nástin třídní digitální knihovny. Ty spolu s detailními návody tvoří základ praktické části práce. Teoretická část se zabývá nutným teoretickým minimem v pozadí projektů, stručnou historií komixů, použitých programů a možnými legálními problémy spojenými se stahováním z Internetu a použitím autorských děl ve vyučování.
Klíčová slova: komix, digitální pomůcky, Inkscape, projektová práce, interaktivní tabule
Abstract Domkář, J. Comics-based Language Teaching in Digital Environment of a Modern Classroom: Cultural awareness projects and activities, Brno, 2010. s. 76. This work is targeted on use of original English comics in learning English in the environment of Czech classroom and problems connected with their integration into educational process, especially their overall unavailability. Author suggest a solution in form of use of digital teaching aids like IWB, vector graphics editors and other programs. Four projects based on use of comics and digital teaching aids and outline of Class Digital Library serve to as demostration of that solution. Projects, Library and detailed tutorials compose the basis of practical part of the thesis. Theoretical part deals with necessary theoretical minimum behind the projects, brief comics history, used programs, and possible legal issues connected with downloading of copyrighted material from the Internet and its use in educational process.
Key words: comics, digital teaching aids, Inkscape, project work, interactive whiteboard. Contents: Introduction...... 1 Theoretical Part 1Terminology...... 2 2Framework Education Program for Elementary Education ...... 5 3Argument about entering digital environment of the classroom...... 6 4Comics as an educational material...... 8 5Argument about using comics as a format in digital environment of modern classroom...... 11 6Small excursion into comics history...... 12 7Programs used...... 15 7.1Inkscape...... 17 7.2GIMP...... 18 7.3Cdisplay...... 18 7.4Camstudio...... 19 8Cultural awareness...... 19 9Techniques and methods used in projects and activities...... 20 9.1Task-based learning...... 20 9.2Project work...... 21 9.3Discussion...... 23 9.4Brainstorming...... 24 9.5Role-play...... 24 9.6Group work...... 24 10Legal notice...... 26 11Conclusion...... 27
Practical Part...... 29 1 Comics library...... 29 2 Tutorials...... 30 2.1 IWB...... 31 2.2 The OOTS...... 31 2.3 Inkscape basics...... 33 2.5 Comics Portfolio...... 44 2.6 GIMP tutorial...... 44 2.7 On scanning and printing...... 50 2.8 On Camstudio...... 52 3 Projects and activities...... 53 3.1 Six most famous things about the country...... 53 3.2 Critical incidents...... 59 3.3 Headline comics...... 64 3.4 Music photo-comics history...... 66 4 Piloting of the projects...... 68 4.1 Music photo-comics history...... 68 4.2 Critical incidents...... 70 Conclusion...... 72 Resumé...... 73 Bibliography...... 74 Introduction While I was reading comics for pleasure for a very long time, I would be able to count the encounters with comics in my education on fingers of my hands. In my opinion it is necessary to change that. This thesis sets its goal as follows: To help with implementation of comics into Czech classroom. I understand that this could not be done without help of modern technologies like IWB and that would make the second goal of this thesis: To help with implementation of these teaching aids, because I have seen the problems connected with it. I have encountered these difficulties during my practices on basic schools in Brno and Havlíčkův Brod, where the interactive boards were installed, but not used, because teachers were not instructed in use of this equipment or there were no programs for the IWB, I decided to concept my thesis as a guide for those interested in implementation of comics through those new teaching aids. I will argue that it is possible to use this equipment creatively by the teacher and that comics and IWB in cooperation provide a solution to lack of original material in the classroom and problems connected with implementation of the new technology. In order to do so, I decided to create or redesign four activities or projects, that use, at some point, digital teaching aids and comics, and are targeted at teaching cultural awareness as one of the topics taught in English classes. It is by no means a work that would cover the whole problem and give the teacher some magic wand to solve all the problems, but it shows possibilities on concrete examples. It will guide the teacher through all the steps of creating such activities and give the teacher the opportunity to create her own activities in a way that saves time and school's precious resources. Moreover I will introduce ways to provide original comics to pupils in the classroom. That will be the topic of the practical part of this work. It will also show that this method is fully compatible with ideas formulated in Framework Educational Program, which will be argued with the rest of the theory behind projects and activities in the theoretical part of this work. It will also include the argument about validity of comics as a material used for digital aids and it will explain use of the cultural awareness topic as well.
1 Theoretical part
1 Terminology
In order to speak about comics, cultural awareness and modern digital teaching aids, it is necessary to define following terms.
Comics The New Short Oxford English Dictionary describes comic as “a light or amusing paper; a periodical with narrative mainly in pictures”(1993: 448) but only as a third meaning of that word. Previous meanings include e. g. comedian. Eisner describes comic as sequencial art (Eisner 1985) and because Cary sees it as too brief, he uses it as an umbrella term that includes cartoon, comic strip, comic book and Graphic novel(2004: 10). Graphic novels will not be used as material in this work, but I have to take in account Czech word comix and its american meaning (See chapter 6). Because of that I will use term comics as it is also used in FEP to describe all of its format variants (See Cary 2004: Defining comics) and also czech comix if the teacher decides to use czech comix or even american comix as a resource for adaptation or her own activities.
Animation is in The New Short Oxford English Dictionary described as “a) action of imparting life, vitality or motion b) preparation or production of animated films, visual images, etc.“(1993: 80) I will use the term differently. I will define it not as a preparation or production but as the result of that process used in computer graphics (either as a part of web browser based applications or a part of other program).
Digital environment of the classroom As the digital technology changes in fast rate and it is not possible to predict its development, I will not try to define all the equipment that is needed to obtain data from the internet and then allow the teacher to use it in the classroom. I will just mention the end-of-the process devices currently introduced into Czech classrooms. And I will hide all this machinery under an umbrella term digital environment of the classroom. It is not
2 important for this thesis if the teacher tries his project with interactive whiteboard or classroom full of computers, normal classroom where every student has his net-book, net-tablet, or teacher has a new 3D projector or whatever device will be manufactured.
Digital teaching aids Interactive whiteboard or IWB is defined by Dudeney as “a whiteboard made interactive by being linked to a computer which uses special IBW software”(2007: 122). There are various technical solutions of this device. All of them need a computer with IBW software, whiteboard itself and some kind of manipulation tool. By manipulation tool I mean either the special pen or stilus, or hand held tablet or even teachers or students finger. Then it depends on how the data are displayed. Either with a data projector or the whiteboard is backlit, which is more expensive. As Dudeney explains the difference between the classical whiteboard and IWB is that ”the teacher uses a special pen... … to manipulate the content on the whiteboard itself, rather then using the mouse to manipulate images on the computer screen...”(2007: 122).
Computer and projector combo Even if teacher's school doesn't have the IWB, it is likely that the school have some digital projector and computers. When implemented properly this Computer and projector combo (CP further on) will serve our purpose as well. Because it can convey digital information to students and allow the user to manipulate it, even though in less comfortable way than IWB, with mouse and keyboard.
Bitmap or Raster is defined by The New Short Oxford English Dictionary as ”a representation in which each item is shown by one or more bits of information.“(1993: 234) Webster's online dictionary provides more precise definition: ”A data file or structure which corresponds bit for bit with an image displayed on a screen, probably in the same format as it would be stored in the display's video memory or maybe as a device independent bitmap. A bitmap is characterised by the width and height of the image in pixels and the number of bits per pixel which determines the number of shades of grey or colours it can represent.”(http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/bitmap). This definition suits our purpose better because it points out to the important technical details the teacher needs to considerate while using bitmaps in his teaching. One of the tutorials
3 in practical part will deal with this phenomena and all its implications. (See Practical part, chapter 2.6)
Vector graphics is not defined by The New Short Oxford English Dictionary. However Wikipedia know the term and defines it as ”Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon(s), which are all based on mathematical equations, to represent images in computer graphics.“ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics) The difference between the two is clearly visible when you zoom to the raster graphic. It becomes grainy. (See App. 1) On the other hand vector graphic does not. The quality of the bitmap depends on the number of pixels. The higher the better. But that means that with the quality of the picture raises the size of the picture file. Vector graphics will not loose the quality no matter how close to the image you are or how large you create such a picture. It will not affect the size of the file as much as it would in case of bitmap graphic. The most of digital imaging devices is raster based, except some industrial plotters and such. Thus the vector graphic is always converted to raster, but it is done at the last possible stage of making an image visible on your screen.
File extension Each computer file has a name that consist of name itself and extension. Those parts are divided by full stop. The length of the name used to be 8 digits and now is much longer, but extension length is usually 3 digits. E.g. pokus.doc. Extension serves as a marker for a program to identify the files it can operate. Our example file pokus.doc could be opened and manipulated in e.g. Open Office Writer. Present operating system usually do not show the extensions and the type of the file is distinguished by special icon. However it is still possible to change the extension. E.g. notepad files with extension txt could be changed into htm files and opened in web browser. This change could be done in most file manager programs with Rename command and it is vital e. g. for creation of cdr or cdz files in this thesis. (See Practical part chapter 1) It is not possible to have files with same name and extension in the same directory.
4 2 Framework Education Program for Elementary Education
According to the new principles of curricular policy formulated in the National Programme for the Development of Education in the Czech Republic (the so-called White Paper) and embodied in Law for Preschool, Elementary, Secondary, Higher Vocational and Other Education a new system of curricular documents for the education of pupils between 3 and 19 years of age is currently being introduced into the education system. There are two levels of curricular documents. State and school level. There are National Education Program (NEP) and FEPs for stages of education (for preschool, elementary and secondary education) on the state level. And on the school level there are School Education Programs (SEPs). Individual schools implement their SEP which is in harmony with higher educational documents. FEP is created according to those principles: – ”are based on a new education strategy, which emphasises key competencies, their interconnectedness with the educational content and application of the acquired knowledge and skills in real life – build on the concept of lifelong learning – formulate the expected level of education stipulated for all graduates of the individual stages of education – support the educational autonomy of schools and professional responsibility of the teachers for the outcomes of the educational process“(Tupý 2007: 6) And on those principles are based its goals: – ”to apply more variable organisation and individualisation of education in accordance with the pupils’ needs and potential and to utilise internal differentiation of instruction; – to create a wider offer of obligatory optional subjects for the development of the pupils' interests and individual capabilities; – to create a positive social, emotional and working atmosphere founded on effective motivation, cooperation and engaging instructional methods; – to implement changes in the assessment of the pupils towards continuous diagnostics, individual assessment of their achievements and a wider use of verbal assessment;
5 – to maintain, as long as possible, natural, heterogeneous groups of pupils and weaken the reasons for segregating pupils into specialised classrooms and schools; – to emphasise efficient cooperation with the pupils’ parents.”(Tupý 2007: 6)
Relationship of FEP to the digital environment and to comics will be mentioned in chapters dedicated to those respective topics.
3 Argument about entering digital environment of the classroom
Teacher has to use some aids, and the question is what aid she will use. The choice of aids is affected by many factors and I will only talk about those relevant to digital teaching aids and therefore digital environment. Dudeney sums up the situation well, so I will quote him fully, when he states that “A large part of the negative attitudes teachers have towards technology is usually the result of a lack of confidence, a lack of faculties or a lack of training, resulting in an inability to see the benefit of using technologies in the classroom. It is also often the case that teachers may not be fully in control of their work situations. A teacher want to use more technology in their teaching, but school may not have the facilities, or, on the other hand, a teacher may be instructed to start using technology for which they feel unprepared or untrained.”(2007: 9)Those are the disadvantages.
I would add that teacher may also feel the use of technology unnecessary in the situation when she has to use both digital and paper form. This duplicity makes one of the forms redundant and since the technology is new, teacher will logically prefer paper form. Dudeney divides people into groups of digital natives and digital immigrants (2007: 8). Digital natives are people who grew up with technology and are used to it. In our case most of our pupils are digital natives and teachers belong to the generation of digital immigrants – people who came recently to the word of technology. In another words our pupils have no problem living in the digital environment and I see this as a huge advantage of digital teaching aids. It is a disadvantage for the digital immigrant and here comes the tutorial part of this thesis. To help digital immigrants with work and life in the new environment. Dudeney also shows us advantages of digital environment and I will mention
6 those relevant to the thesis: • “Technology , especially the Internet, presents us with new opportunities for authentic tasks and materials, as well as access to wealth of ready-made ELT materials. • Learners increasingly expect language schools to integrate technology into teaching. • Technology offers new ways for practicing language and assessing performance. • Technology is becoming increasingly mobile. • Using a range of ICT tools can give learners exposure to and practice in all of the four main language skills – speaking, listening, writing and reading.” (2007: 7) Technology, ICT tools and Internet would all fall under the term of Digital environment of the classroom. How this work helps in implementation of digital environment to the classroom? It enlarges the digital environment, giving the teacher new tools to work with and be less dependent on actual hardware of digital environment she has at her disposal. Also it makes the teacher less dependent on paper environment. Those tools mentioned above are, among other less important programs, vector and bitmap graphic manipulation programs Inkscape and GIMP and tutorials that will teach the teacher how to use them to her advantage.(See Practical part chapter 2)The thesis introduces a Comic portfolio that will allow the teacher to design her own comics and redesign existing comics that could be used in her classroom and also enable the teacher to and pupils to create their own comics right in the classroom as a part of the learning process. To focus on Czech classroom of basic school we should also look on digital environment from the point of view of FEP EE. It is a fact that FEP pays a great attention to Information communication technologies – therefore to the digital environment. It defines functions of this area as follows: “The educational area Information and Communication Technologies (hereinafter referred to as ICTs) makes it possible for all pupils to achieve the basic level of information literacy – to attain the elementary skills of operating computational and information technologies, to be familiar with the world of information, to work creatively with information and use it in their further studies and everyday life. Considering the growing need for the acquisition of basic skills of work with computational technologies, the educational area ICTs has been included as a compulsory part of elementary education at Stages 1 and 2.“(Tupý 2007: 32)
7 And it also defines what skills the pupil shall have in general: “The skills acquired in the educational area ICTs make it possible for the pupil to apply computational technology with a wide range of educational software and information sources in all areas of elementary education. This application level transcends the framework of the educational area ICTs and becomes a part of all educational areas of elementary education.”(Tupý 2007: 32) One of the specified outcomes from this educational area is that the pupil shall work with text and pictures in text and graphics editors (Tupý 2007: 33). As it was mentioned in part dedicated to the FEP EE in general, it is not defined in what manner the pupils aquire those skills. This thesis gives the teacher one more possibility to engage pupil with digital environment, in another words ITC, and learn the skills required along with English. Exactly following the spirit of FEP EE. There is, I think, no doubt about using the digital environment, because it is supported by the curricular documents obligatory for all czech basic schools.
4 Comics as an educational material.
Cary gives us quite exhaustive defense of comics as an educational material. I want to highlight some of his ideas that support his defense.
Second language acquisition Cary focuses on two main principles of Krashen's theory and that is comprehension hypothesis and affective filter hypothesis. The first one states that pupil learns L2 while using the language to communicate and receives understandable messages (comprehensible input). It is important for the defense of comics as an educational material to state that Krashen believes that the message is more understandable “by utilizing context, extralinguistic information and our knowledge of the world.”(1994: 54) Comics as “A sequence of drawings... typically having a dialogue printed in balloons ”(http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/comics) provides this extralinguistic information and context in its basic form. The second hypothesis about affective filter states that pupil's ability to absorb information, no matter how comprehensible is limited by affective filter, that is level of anxiety and motivation of the pupil. Well motivated and secure pupil can absorb more input or in Krashen's words: the pupils acquire second language “when they obtain
8 comprehensible input and their affective filters are low enough to allow the input in”(1994: 58) Again comics provide the low affect, because it is understandable and pupil faces no fear usually connected with normal text above pupils independent reading level. Entertaining qualities of comics also reduce the affective filter because pupils have motivation to read it.
Social interaction Another strong point is that pupils need to communicate to improve their SLA. According to Swain's hypothesis of comprehensible output, pupil who communicate in L2 focuses on syntax of the language not only the meaning (which she focuses on in case of input). Comics in this case serve as a topic of such communication with all its clues and context. Again it is an entertaining topic to discuss which also help in keeping motivation.
Authentic material Comics definitely is an authentic material and shows how the language works on the native-spoken level. Combination of text and pictures that could be read again and again makes it perfect choice as a SLT material. There is a wide variety of difficulty level according to the amount of text in comics from wordless comics to graphic novels. And that is not all. If the material does not fit from any reason, we can change it to non- authentic material easily.
Brain-based teaching Cary sees brain-based teaching as very important in his argument for comics as an educational material. Application of brain research to the classroom showed possible approaches to pupils. Cary says that “compared to traditional classroom the brain- compatible classroom feature more hands-on, manipulative based activities, simulations, role-plays, projects, and small group-work.... … Students are active learners, not passive recipients of knowledge, so teachers talk less and students talk more.”(2004: 19) Those qualities are highlighted by Ur and other authors (Ur 1996: 120).
Engaging content
9 Cary says that “comics consistently engage students”(2004: 19) and names some reasons for it like humour, pop-culture themes, real world language and such. He also points out to the fact that students know comics from outside the school and invest into comics (financially and emotionally). Then they are glad that they are “allowed” to use it inside the school. Such a meaningful material with engaging content known by students from their everyday experience then inevitably helps to accelerate the SLA.
Visuals and levels of learning Cary uses Wolfe's division of learning into concrete, representational and abstract. Teachers try to use the concrete – real objects whenever possible, but when it is not possible, we have to use visual representations. The third, abstract level exists even without that representation. Cary shows on nice example with Spanish definition of word “trompo”(2004: 23) that abstract learning in L2 is difficult. And here comes comics that connects the abstracts of objects and their representation in one form (See appendix 1). Cary also points out that from all the senses our eyes takes about 70 per cent of our receptors.
Progressive literacy Cary uses progressive literacy theory(Goodman 1986) that states that authentic literature as a whole, engages pupils more than excerpted literature chuncks or adapted literature in form of graded readers. Cary says that “comics contain whole stories (sometimes via serialized issues told with natural language, avoiding stilted, artificial language of controlled vocabulary stories.“(2004: 24) Another important moment of progressive literacy theory is that pupils improve their language skills by using language for real learner-centered communication. Here comics create ideal topic for such a communication and in combination with digital environment the pupils are provided with easy means for such communication and comics of their own interest.
FEP EE in its basic principle struggles for “use of to create a positive social, emotional and working atmosphere founded on effective motivation, cooperation and engaging instructional methods;”(Tupý 2007: 6) and in this light projects and activities based on comics fulfill this basic principle to the letter or tries to do so. To conclude the argument about using comics as an educational material I will
10 use Cary's words when he deals with appropriateness of comics: “Ironically the “naked buns” effect1 bolsters the case of comics. The power of images to command attention, to move, to directly communicate, explains, in part, why comics are such a powerful learning medium.“(2004: 46)
5 Argument about using comics as a format in digital environment of modern classroom.
Most of the materials for interactive whiteboards is designed either as a special program2 or as a web browser based application (http://www.topmarks.co.uk/Interactive.aspx?cat=17 ). I will use the term application both for programs (because they are applications of an operating system) and web browser-based applications. This gives the teacher a ready-made tool for immediate use. But the tool thus given is created for one purpose only – the activity designed by the creator of the application. E. g. application that teaches comparing and measuring of lenght3 could be used only for that, it's other uses are fairly limited. Also the target audience is specified in advance by the author – not by the teacher. Graphic design is set for that target group, so even if the application itself is suitable for teacher's pupils, it's design could put the pupils off, if they are not the exact target group. E. g. Clock application (http://www.cgpbooks.co.uk/pages/interactiveElearning.asp? elearning=wolf ) has a certain design, that might or might not be suitable for certain type of pupil depending on age and taste. Variety of those possibilities rises of course, as the time progresses and new applications are created, but they still keep the teacher only as a recipient and experienced user. Creation of such applications require extensive knowledge web design and flash animations, not to mentions the time requirements of such process. Let's have a look at comics from the point of view of validity of material for interactive whiteboard. It combines pictures and text in the same way as aforementioned applications. Applications, thanks to animation, does not have to use panels as comics, but basically both work in the same way, they are sequenced pictures, although in case
1 Fact that image of naked buns is much more controversial than words “naked buns” See Cary p. 45 2 Electronic version of Válková 2006 3 http://www.eduplace.com/cgi-bin/schtemplate.cgi? template=/kids/mw/help/eh_popup_k.thtml&grade=K&title=Compare,+Order, +and+Measure+Length&tm=tmfa0113e
11 of animations the sequence is turned into motion. Both applications and comics are available on-line. And indeed the internet is the main source of comics for Czech teacher, because the english written comics are available but they cannot function in the same way as Gary suggests(2004: 198), because they simply are not cheap and easily obtainable in paper version. The prices of comic books is about 250 crowns per book in czech and prises of comics in original language starts at 450 per issue.4 Although Gary is in a slightly different situation, he still gives a plenty of internet sources of comics. His list of web pages is from 2004 and it is certainly not the only internet source available. Since downloading is not a crime within the boundaries of Czech law, teacher can also use services like RapidShare(www.rapidshare.com) and it's search engines (www.newzfind.com or others) to download whole scanned comics. And since use of copyrighted material for educational purposes is not a crime either(See chapter 10), teacher can create virtual comics library for her pupils accessible via school computers or via aforementioned interactive whiteboard, data projector or any other imaging device. By using all available methods of acquiring comics the teacher gains material suitable not only for cultural awareness-centred lessons but for any other activity such as Cary suggests in his work.(2004: chapter 3) Also Cary's answer to those pupils and teachers who ask him for specific topics of comics is to look for online reviews of comics.(2004: 183) This thesis gives another answer: Teacher and pupil alike can create their own comics according to their needs.
6 Small excursion into comics history.
Because of the variety of comic formats I decided to introduce a short history of comics. I hope it will clarify all the possible misinterpretations. Second reason to do so is to present the teacher with the knowledge of comics that would enable her to give advice and opinion to her pupils. I tried to focus on American comics because it is the most influencial from english speaking countries and American comics will propably serve as a source of reading material for the teacher and her pupils. There are also european and asian forms of comics with its variety of genres and forms which I will mention only briefly again in order to enable the teacher to give competent advice.
4 E.g. on http://www.svetkomiksu.cz/komiksy-v-originale
12 The history of comics starts long before the turn of 20th century with the sequenced pictures well in antient ages (e.g. Trajan collumn) but it established itself as a form during the 1890s. Weiner says that “The yellow kid by Richard. F. Outcault was first to catch widespread public attention in 1895.“(Weiner 2004: 1) Although the look of comics established itself in political satire earlier in the century, Outcault contributed to later comics with the simple style of word ballons he used. Other comics followed with long- lasting heroes like Popeye who appeared first in 1929 in comics Thimble theatre. As Wiener mentions “Popeye, Little Orphan Annie and Li'l Abner found the doorway out of the comic strip into successful adaptation in other media, and many superheroes have become stars of films, plays and novels.”(2004: 2) At that time the main media for comics was newspaper and comics appeared in form of the comics strips on one of the pages of newspaper. Weiner tells us that “Comic books, magazines containing a few stories, were first published in early 1930's”(2004: 2) . They were usually composed of reprinted comic strips from newspapers. It was sure profit for publishers because they tested the readership on the newspapers. As Weiner says the ”comic world exploded”(2004: 2) with introduction of Superman. He was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1932 and first published in 1938 by Detective Comics Inc. More superheroes followed e. g. Captain America. The World War II gave all the superheroes the arch-enemy they could fight. As Weiner points out, “comic books featured decidedly patriotic heroes”(2004: 2). In fact they started to fight Adolf Hitler long before japan attack on Pearl Harbor. Comic books became a cheap entertainment for the soldiers during the war, which explains the poor quality of the majority of comic books. Superheroes lost their enemy with the defeat of Axis in 1945 and Weiner comments that “after the world war the superheroes were as confused as their creators about what to do next.”(2004: 3) “Newspaper comic strips were always recognized as something read by everyone, but from the beginnings of a new medium, comic books were perceived as a format for children.”(Weiner 2004: 3) But there was a new group of readers emerging in 1945 – the teenagers. The term was coined during that year. This is important for us because from this point on we can look for comics designed especially for the group of society we usually teach. This change of readership brought changes in heroes in 1950s. As Weiner says “Funny animal comics entertained the kids... … while romance, crime, horror comic books were published with a teen audience in mind.”(2004: 5)
13 Especially horror comics showed violence and gore. (e.g. EC publisher's MAD) And the reaction to it was about to come. “In 1954, psychiatrist Frederic Wertham published a book about troubled American youth, Seduction of the Innocent. He cited more than one cause for youthful rebellion, but he pinpointed the influence of comic books as motivating factor in youthful disturbance”(2004: 8) says Weiner in order to higlight the start of censorship of comics. Under the banner of Wertham's book gathered all the opposition. The Senate Subcommittee for Juvenile Delinquency held hearings in the same year. Publishers were afraid they would have to close so they founded Comics Association of America and its branch Comics Code Authority – a self-censorship. Publishers had to present their scripts to the the CCA and when approved, they got CCA seal on the cover. Readers were sure that “policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.”(http://www.comicartville.com/comicscode.htm) or “Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gun play, physical agony, gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated” (http://www.comicartville.com/comicscode.htm) and of course “Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested.”(http://www.comicartville.com/comicscode.htm) Which limited the story-lines of comics, but which also limited advertisement: “To the best of his ability, each publisher shall ascertain that all statements made in advertisements conform to the fact and avoid misinterpretation.”(http://www.comicartville.com/comicscode.htm) That wasn't such a bad rule. Those stern rules were a reaction to the state of comics in that era and many titles had to be closed. What prevailed was the superhero, as Weiner says “... much to the surprise of those who worked in the industry, one type of story that did work well in the sanitized environment (of the Comic code) was the superhero story.”(2004: 9) (E. g. Flash) But the superheroes were not the same as before. Important change was brought by Amazing Spiderman.It featured a teenager who, appart from fighting super-villains, had to pay bills, study hard and has his first relationships with girls. In another words it was superhero with normal trouble. Spiderder-man comics was targeted at teenage audience and claimed that anyone from it's audience could be that kind of superhero. Another way how to escape the Comic code authority was to switch the format
14 from comic book to magazine format. The 60's saw the emergence of comics fandom.(2004: 11) As Weiner points out, this was important for the publishers, because they could depend on the audience that knew them and vice versa. Those people who loved comics also played an important role in the next most important phenomena in comics industry. The emergence of underground comics. It was another reaction to the Comic code. To distinguish itself from regular law-abiding comics, the new name was established – comix.(Weiner 2004: 12) The topics of comix were such as drugs, rock music and of course sex. X stands here for X-rated. It was created by fans for fans at first. Comix brought new freedom and new ideas to the genre. Example of comix would be ZAP comix magazine. Regular, non-underground comics changed during the seventies as well in many ways. One of the changes as Weiner says „a network of comic book specialty stores began to grow throughout the United states.”(2004: 13) Comics fans found their safe- heaven as well as the publishers, because they sold the whole portfolio of comics to local vendors, who knew their customers. Fans had a place to buy comics and also to meet each other. However comix was not sold here because the vendors were under pressure of local authority that defined obscenity. Another major change came with introduction of graphic novels in 1971. First one was Blackmark. And today Weiner can state that “Finally graphic novels have found their way into classrooms, as teachers are realizing their usefulness as a literacy tools. After a study of graphic novels, researchers concluded that the average graphic novel introduced readers to twice as many words as average children's book.”(2004: 61) But nowadays situation in comics industry wouldn't be complete without influence of Japanese comics called manga. There are many titles translated or created exclusively for English-speaking countries. There is a variety of manga genres according to age and topic. Manga also has its film counterpart in Anime. Examples of Manga would be Terinu, Love Hina and of Anime would be Appleseed, Souleater or Pokemon.
7 Programs used
I decided to use use open source programs. But before I explain my reasons I should explain the term open source. According to the Open Source Initiative there are
15 10 rules the publisher of a computer program must fulfill in order to qualify for open source: “1. Free Redistribution The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. 2. Source Code The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed. 3. Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. 4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons. 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. 7. Distribution of License The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties. 8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a
16 particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution. 9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software. 10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.“(http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd) Mainly points 6, 7, 10 are of interest to the teacher. They mean that teacher can use the open source program not only for educational purposes – in this case to educate herself, but also for his work. Teacher is also allowed to distribute the software to the pupils in order to enlarge digital environment of the classroom to the pupils. So they should be able to benefit from it's use whenever and wherever they want. The last point gives the user – school, pupils and teachers the liberty of choice of their hardware, operation system. E.g.: If the school uses only Microsoft Windows® on its computer and the pupil have a Mac OS or Linux on his computer, the non-open source program would push the pupil to buy or otherwise acquire not only the program itself but also Microsoft Windows® and in the situation of Mac OS even different kind of computer (switch from Mac to PC)! That freedom also gives the pupils the opportunity to see the alternatives to the usually used programs. That would help decrease the level of computer piracy in Czech republic. Those are the main reasons I decided to use open-source programs for creation of all the comics created in this thesis but also for creation of the thesis text itself.
7.1 Inkscape
Is described by it's authors as “Open source scalable vector graphics editor with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a
17 streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.“(http://inkscape.org/? lang=en&css=css/base.css ) It has no relevance for teacher to know the details of SVG format unless she wants to contribute to development of the program itself, which is not the goal of this work.
7.2 GIMP
Name GIMP is an acronym standing for GNU image manipulation program. It manipulates bitmap graphics and we will be using it for adjustments of bitmaps before we import them to Inkscape. (See Practical part chapter 2.2) From the full list of features on its web page (http://www.gimp.org/about/introduction.html) I will mention the possibility to work with layers, masks, channels and scaling. It is possible to install the program on various operating systems. However for instalation to Microsoft Windows it is neccessary to install GTK+ runtime environment which is part of the installation package. GIMP is considered to be equal to company developed programs like Adobe Photoshop, or Corel Paint Shop-Pro.
7.3 Cdisplay
Authors web page regarding this program was not working, but the program is available from various sources with this description: “CDisplay Comic Reader was written to ease the reading of comics with the pages in CBR/CBZ (Comic Book Archive file). This was partly down to the existing programs currently available being too general purpose and thus awkward to use when simply wanting to read a comic. It is important to understand that this program has no file write capabilities; files are left totally untouched. A small amount of configuration data is written to the registry but apart from that the computer and its data is left totally untouched.“ (http://www.downloadsource.net/18912/CDisplay-Comic-Reader/ )
This program is very useful from authors own experience not only for pupils who will read the comics from teachers digital comics library, but also for teacher, who can compile her own creations into single file instead of manipulating large numbers of picture files. I have to highlight that it is really just a viewing program and it does not support creation of CBR/CBZ files. However those files are easy to create and no
18 program in particular is needed for that. There is of course a tutorial that deals with manipulation with this program and also the creation of CBR/CBZ files in Practical part, chapter 1.
7.4 Camstudio
Authors on their web page describe the possibilities of this program in this way:
“CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos”(http://camstudio.org/) In less advertising way we can say that this program is a tool that allows us to create video tutorials for our pupils. Basically it scans the desktop and records everything you do there e. g. the progress of your work in Inkscape into a digital film file (AVI format). Of course the teacher can do the presentation in the classroom demonstrating in real time. But video format has certain advantages. First of all the teacher can prepare the ideal conditions for his work without the preparation visible to the pupil. Secondly the teacher can actually pilot his presentation without “experimenting” on real pupils, review his work and make adjustments until the video is perfect in his eyes. Last but not least, teacher can rewind the video and repeat action without tiresome repetitive manipulation in Inkscape or whatever else is teacher presenting. Camstudio or any other equivalent of this program can also record your voice. I find this redundant in conditions of Czech classrooms where there is no need to electronically enhance your voice, but some teachers might find this feature attractive. Practical advice concerning use of the program will be given in respective tutorials in practical part of this thesis.
8 Cultural awareness
Tomalin and Stempleski define cultural awareness as a term that “describes sensitivity to the impact of culturally-induced behaviour on language use and communication.”(1993: 5) They chose the term to describe three important features of the activities they devised: – “awareness of one's own culturally-induced behaviour; – awareness of one's own culturally-induced behaviour of others; – ability to explain one's own cultural standpoint.”(1993: 5)
19 And why cultural awareness as a topic for the projects? This topic was chosen in order to illustrate the versatility of the comics as a resource material. Another reason is that it is possible to address the topic with more modern methods suggested in FEP and the fact that FEP EE's main objectives for pupils is “to guide the pupils towards tolerance of and consideration for other people, their cultures and spiritual values, to teach them to live together with others;”(Tupý 2007: 10)
9 Techniques and methods used in projects and activities.
9.1 Task-based learning
Opposite to other types of learning where the emphasis is on accuracy of pupils language task-based learning focuses on normal communication and tries to push pupils to situations that elicit such type of communication that would be as close to the real language as possible, because without such a practice pupils may not be able to achiev this ultimate goal. Ellis in her work states that task „hold a central place in current SLA research and also in language pedagogy”(2003: 1) and quotes many authors as evidence of her claim. Some of the projects in practical part and the use of comics itself are trying to bring something real to he classroom, even if “only” in digital form. I tried to use either real material (comics) or some real facts or background when the comics are adapted for the educational purposes. However the term task is not strictly defined and Ellis agrees that there is not an agreement and states many different definitions of task by various authorities in the field. I will quote Lee's definition of task: “A task is (1) a classroom activity or exercise that has: (a) an objective obtainable only by the interaction among participants, (b) a mechanism for structuring and sequencing interaction, and (c) a focus on meaning exchange; (2) a language learning endeavor that requires learners to comprehend, manipulate, and/or produce target language as they perform some set of workplans.”(2003: 5) Comics are there to give the teacher exactly that – chance for pupils to comprehend, manipulate, and/or produce target language and digital environment is the means that allows it in conditions of Czech classroom. Ellis looks at tasks from different points of view and sets some categories to define it more precisely. Those are “scope, perspective, authenticity, linguistic skills
20 required for the task, psychological processes involved in task performance, and the outcome of the task.”(2003: 5) From those Ellis derives the critical features of the task. That is: – “a task is a workplan – a task involves primary focus on meaning – a task involves real-world processes of the language – a task can involve any of the four language skills – a task engages cognitive processes – a task has a clearly defined communicative outcome.”(2003: 10) If we look though those critical features on presented projects and activities, we could say that only Critical incidents could not be seen as task-based learning, because it has not a clearly defined communicative outcome. It depends on the pupils what information they learn. Also it is questionable if the adapted form of the comics here stands for involvement of real-world processes of the language, although the dialogues in pairs could pass as such a real-word process.
9.2 Project work
Diana L Fried-Booth defines a full scale project as a three stage process that includes: – Classroom planning, where pupils with teacher put together the content and scope of the project. It also includes the pupil's own evaluation of language needed. – Carrying out the project. During this stage pupils go out of the classroom to perform whatever task they bestowed upon themselves. – Reviewing and monitoring the work then include feedback from students in various forms.(1986: 7) Fried-Booth sees the main advantages of project work in shift from teacher- centered learning to pupil-centered learning, because the pupil herself sets the goal of the projects (within the boundaries given by teacher) and thus she influence the language content and difficulty. Fried-Booth sees another great advantage of the project work in its layered approach to the language skills. It allows the pupil to practice the skill which need arises from the project itself. As the project progresses, pupil is supposed to use all skills. It is clear from the Fried-Booth's classification of project work that the project in
21 its purest form is hard to use in the environment of Czech classroom. Fried-Booth uses divides project based activities according to level of linguistic control into: – controlled use of language e.g. from communicative activities (information gap games) to assignments (research in the library) – Bridging activities e. g. work with authentic materials brought to the class – “Free” use of language e.g. full-scale project According to this division comics based “projects” fall into second category of bridging activities. However the use of digital environment would necessarily move it to some extend to the third final category, even if the pupils would not physically leave the classroom, they would be exposed to the virtual English environment. There is also a drawback in the skill used under such conditions. The receptive skills will be used in the same way but the productive skill training would be mainly restricted to interaction within the class e. g. It would be hard to incorporate speaking with native speaker in such a project. On the other hand it wouldn't be impossible either if we incorporate such programs as Skype and let native pupils participate in the project of our pupils. Nevertheless comics is an ideal material that Fried-Booth suggest to use in non-native English environment to compensate the lack of native speakers. “It is not the environment that determines the success of a project, but the students motivation.” (1986: 11) And high motivation is one of the main advantages of comics as a educational material as Cary pointed out.(See chapter 4) According to Alan Maley in his introduction to Project Work(Fried-Booth 1986: 3 ) the project work brings in it's essence four types of authenticity to TESL. – Authenticity of language input – Authenticity of task – Authenticity of event – Authenticity of learners experience Learner is also responsible for his own learning. Comics based projects are no exceptions and they make projects as Diana L Fried-Booth understands them possible in Czech environment. There are also possible disadvantages of project work recognized by Fried- Booth such as: – Difficulties with organization of projects that mean more work for the teacher. In this regard the comics and digital environment could work as a remedy to some degree,
22 if used properly. – Difficulties with monitoring. Pupils won't be on their own outside the classroom in our case but they will be working withing digital environment with such tools at their disposal like translator programs and such. So great care should be devoted to “rules of engagement” within the digital environment. – Another problem poses the lack of motivation of some members of the group or the whole group with lack of success during the projects. Projects used in the thesis are in Fried-Booth's point of view more or less bridging activities but they could be developed into full-scale projects. However such changes would affect the curriculum to some extend. That is why the piloted projects are used in its basic form only.
9.3 Discussion
Ur says that “the most natural and effective way for learners to practise talking freely in English is by thinking out some problem or situation together through verbal interchange of ideas; or in simple terms to discuss.”(1981: 2) As Ur states the discussion could only be successful if it incorporates several features. It should have a topic, group work and role-play. Topic should be interesting for the pupils and it should have a purpose. Discussion should be done in small groups because the whole class can listen, but only few can speak to such a large audience. Also smaller audience will suit pupils who are reluctant to speak up or give their opinion. And a role play gives the opportunity set the discussion even only imaginatively into different background then school. Therefore making it more natural. Moreover the discussion should have always a purpose, because the talk for the talk's sake is unnatural and should be avoided.
Teacher should work as a moderator, supporter and of course as monitor to keep the conversation in target language only. The role of supporter is extremely important because not everyone is keen on communication and proliferation of his ideas in the group.
Comics especially, and Cary states that several times, is an excellent topic for discussion and it does not matter how it is brought to the pupil, either in paper or digital form. All the discussions in the projects and activities should be done in groups and the projects themselves give the purpose to the discussion. However the difficulty of digital
23 environment itself as a topic is a slight disadvantage, because the discussion should have a simple topic. But once the pupils are used to digital environment, and because it is one of the key competences of FEP once they are supposed to be used to it, this should not pose a problem.
9.4 Brainstorming
Ur describes Brainstorming as “simple pooling of ideas ”(1996: 312) It requires pupils to share their ideas as quickly as possible. It is vital not to judge or comment the ideas. It is best to get as many of ideas in as short time as possible. That will ensure larger participation of pupils. It is possible to write the ideas down, but it is not vital. There is no previously precisely defined outcome. It is possible to do the brainstorm in the whole class of in smaller groups. Variation of brainstorming is used in the projects, usually to define vocabulary needed for the project. Therefore pupils themselves decide what words they need or need not. As the brainstorming is a problem solving method, it could be used by students to decide the course of their project if need be.
9.5 Role-play Ur refers to role-play as “...all sorts of activities where learners imagine themselves in a situation outside the classroom...... sometimes playing the role of someone other then themselves...”(1996: 131) Ur states that role-play is one of few techniques that allows pupils to train real-life situation e.g. when pupils take roles of comics creation staff and have to create comics. It is a task based activity but also a role play, because the pupils are not in fact comics creation staff. Of course the this technique is mainly targeted at confident pupils and may not suit well anxious and inhibited pupils. Work in group may help those pupils. As with all techniques clear instruction and demonstration – in this case rehearsal.
9.6 Group work The situation when pupils cooperate in small groups to achieve something is called simply group work and Ellis dedicates a whole chapter in his work to define and justify group work on basis of sociocultural theory. (2003: chapter 6) However the concept is much older, e. g. Dewey states that: “certain capacities of an individual are not brought out except under the stimulus of of associating with others.”(1916: 302) But it is Jacobs who describes the advantages of group work so perfectly that it is not
24 necessary to invent something new and I will just quote him fully:
“Advantage Comment 1 The quantity of learner speech In teacher-fronted classrooms, the can increase. teacher typically speaks 80% of the time; in group work more students talk for most of the time. 2 The variety of speech acts can In teacher-fronted classrooms, increase. students are cast in a responsive role, but in group work they can perform a wide range of roles, including those involved in the negotiation of meaning. 3 There can be more In teacher-fronted lessons, teachers individualization of instruction. shape their instruction to the needs of the average student but in group work the needs of individual students can be attended to. 4 Anxiety can be reduced. Students feel less nervous speaking in a second language in front of their peers than in front of the whole class. 5 Motivation can increase. Students will be less competitive when working in groups and are more likely to encourage each other. 6 Enjoyment can increase. Students are 'social animals' and thus enjoy interacting with others in groups; in teacher-fronted classrooms student-student interaction is often proscribed. 7 Independence can increase. Group activities help students to become independent learners. 8 Social integration can increase. Group activities enable students to get to know each other. 9 Students can learn how to work In typical teacher-fronted classroom,
25 together with others. students are discouraged from helping each other; group work helps students to learn collaborative skills. 10 Learning can increase. Learning is enhanced by group work because students are willing to take risks and can scaffold each other's efforts." (Jacobson 1998)
After reading this there is no doubt that group work should be implemented to czech classroom as much as possible. And it is also the reason for implementing group work to the projects presented in the practical part of this thesis.
Work in digital environment is usually a solo work. One PC or Mac is usually operated by one user. IWB brings the new possibility of “group work” with that one computer. I tried to incorporate group work in the presented projects and activities to show that digital environment does not necessarily separate pupils and when it is used to bring some engaging content like comics, it could actually help stimulate the group work.
10 Legal notice
Some concepts used in this work are questionable from the point of view of law. The idea of digital library (see practical part ) with numerous comics of pupils favourite superheroes is a pedagogical dream-come-true, but raises some questions concerning author's rights. The issue of distribution of illegal data is widely discussed topic and even subject of political struggle. Czech legal system deals with author's rights in law number 121/2000 Sb. We will be interested in § 31, 35 and 25. Paragraph 25 deals with the creating of copy of work of art for one's own personal need and states that royalty for this copy is paid by the producer or dealer of devices needed for creating of such a copy. (http://www.sagit.cz/pages/sbirkatxt.asp? zdroj=sb00121&cd=76&typ=r) In another words it is legal to download material from the internet for your own personal need. You are allowed to have one copy. However, it
26 is forbidden to sell or distribute such a copy. There are some ways of downloading like torrent download, that technically distribute data to other people and thus make this kind of download of comics illegal. Also if you e. g. send copies of previously downloaded comics to your pupils you distribute author's material illegally! § 31 states that those who quote correctly (the name of the author, name of the work of art and source) do not violate the author' rights if they use it for, among others, educational purposes. That allows the teacher to use the comics in the classroom. § 35 deals with use of work of art. It is possible to use work of art in schools “performance” without braking the law, among other circumstances (e. g.it is also possible to use the work of art during church celebration.) So if the teacher does not produce another copies for students and only allows them to read the comics during educational process he should not brake the law, if he quotes the author, name of the work of art and the source “adequately”(http://www.sagit.cz/pages/sbirkatxt.asp?zdroj=sb00121&cd=76&typ=r)
11 Conclusion In the theoretical part of this theses I defined comics as one of the ideal educational materials and supported my definition by claims of Cary and others. However the introduction of the comics to the Czech classroom faces several problems. Namely its relatively high price and overal unavailability in paper form.
To overcome those obstacles I suggested the use of digital environment that was defined as a sum of all digital equipment available to the teacher with the importance of IWB. I argued that the use of digital environment is justified not only because it can bring new material to the classroom, but also because it's use is sanctioned by the most important curricular documents that stated, among other key competeces of pupils, the ability to use ICT effectively.
As the internet is the main source of comics I also introduced tools that would allow the teacher to manipulate the comics in most effective manner to deliver it to the pupil. Inkscape, GIMP, Cdisplay and Camcorder are introduced as well as the fact that all these programs are open-source based which contributes to the availability to teachers and pupils alike.
Because the downloading and distribution of comics, in fact an intellectual
27 property, is highly sensitive issue, I also included legal advice for teacher. The brief historical development of comics is also included to give the teacher basic knowledge of comics as such for the best benefit of her pupils.
The theoretical part also deals with methods and techniques used in those projects that are presented in practical part to show the capabilities of comics in combination with digital environment on a topic of cultural awareness.
28 Practical part
As I meant this thesis not only for reading but also as a manual, I included tutorials to help the teacher with implementation of comics into her teaching. It should lead her through creation of new comics and also with altering and presenting the existing ones with tools on her computer. Why bother and use computer at all? Because under right conditions this way can save a lot of time and resources. Each school should be provided with IWB's and teachers are given notebooks for their work on one hand and on the other there are all the limits on paper and other resources. You will be able to do the job with some basic computer skill, few hints on scanning and some basic picture manipulation. Also when you draw something in the class on real blackboard it serves only once and even for stick characters you need a bit of talent. With IWB it can serve many times again and again saving a lot of time and resources and no talent is necessary.
1 Comics library While there is a list of example projects where comics serve at some point, the best thing to do with comics is to read them. As you can read in theoretical part there are several advantages of comics. There are many comics available on the internet and pupils should be encouraged to read them. You can still download full comics from RapidShare or similar databases, because downloading itself is not a crime. I do not suggest distribution. Do not send issues of your downloaded Amazing Spider-man to your pupils but it is possible to store your collection of comics in the classroom computer and let pupils read it during the free reading sessions. Make sure to connect the comics you used with the comics available at classroom computer. Comics issues in digital form are usually distributed in form of *.cbr, *.cbz or *.tar files and you can access them with variety of program under GNU GPL licence depending on your operating system:
“Windows:
29 * CDisplay, the Windows Sequential Image Viewer for Windows by David Dayton. Available here: http://www.geocities.com/davidayton/CDisplay.html
Linux:
* cbrPager: a simple comic pager for Linux (using GTK+) Available here: http://www.jcoppens.com/soft/cbrpager/index.en.php
Mac OSX:
* FFView Available here: http://www.feedface.com/projects/ffview.html“(http://www.serjtech.com/support/i ndex.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=4)
It is also possible to create your own archives of comics. It is easy to do: Save every page - picture of the comics “issue” you want to create as a *.jpg image and name each picture as a page number e. g. 001, 002 etc. Then you archive the set of images with WinRar or Winzip or similar program. Thus created archive file has an extension *.rar or *.zip. Then simply change the extension from rar to cbr or zip to cbz and any of aforementioned readers will be able to open your archive. As for the activities connected to reading of comics I recommend Cary's work, especially chapter 3, because from the point when comics reaches pupil via digital environment, it is possible to use standard methods described by Cary. There are tutorials for those who want to go further and use digital environment not only for delivery of comics, but also for further activities and projects.
2 Tutorials All the tutorials are expected to be practiced with the programs needed open on teachers computer. For the reasons of convenience all the introductory pictures are included within the tutorial and not in the separate appendix form as usual. As I mentioned in the introduction and throughout the thesis, the implementation
30 of modern technologies is inevitable. Each school should be provided with interactive whiteboards and teachers are given notebooks for their work on one hand and on the other there are all the limits on paper and other resources. Most problems with the modern technologies is their co-existence with the old technologies. If the teacher is to implement aforementioned projects, she has to learn few basic procedures in Inkscape vector graphic manipulation program, even less procedures in GIMP bitmap graphic manipulation program and basics of scanning. Because of the fact that the thesis is about digital enviroment and digital materials, the teacher has to know how to digitalize paper materials properly to her advantage and that of her pupils.
2.1 IWB
There will be no special substitution for introduction of IWB. I will let that to people who sell IWBs. There are many functions of IWB. It can record what you do in the same way as Camstudio, you can draw in different colours with it and much more. But you will not need it for the projects. You will be using the IWB stilus or pen only in the same way as mouse on a regular computer. The point of the stilus works as left button of the mouse and there should be a button on the stilus that works as a right button of the mouse. And that is all you need to know in order to start using the projects in classroom.
2.2 The OOTS Our goal is to create comic strip that would serve as a teaching aid in a situation when there is no appropriate comic strip we could use. This guide will show you how to do that as fast and as best as possible. For our strip and for all strips used in this work I chose Rick Burlew's style he uses in The Order of the Stick or OOTS (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots.html) I would refer to it as the OOTS style further on. I did so because this style has many advantages a creative teacher can exploit:
It could be easily produced with right tools. It has all the expression tools we need. If done properly the production is not time consuming. The creator of the comics does not have to have a drawing talent to create a good comics.
31 No special hardware is necessary and it is also easy to learn. This advantage is good for the teacher but also for his pupils who could also create their own comics. The comics looks good, but it is not intimidating. Pupils won't be discouraged if you tell them to create something like that, as Cary suggests(2004: 133)
The OOTS
32 The OOTS style is created mainly as computer vector graphic and there is a variety of software you can use to manipulate it. There are some well known programs like Corel DRAW, Adobe Illustrator and many others. Those aforementioned are general purpose programs and there is also large number of comics-oriented programs like Manga Studio or Comic Life. All of those mentioned above are professional tools. You are free to buy them but the prices are not meant for teachers, or even schools. Well, not the average basic school in Czech republic. The price of one copy of Corel DRAW on the market in 2010 is about 10 000,- . But there are other options. GNU GPL(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html) is a shortcut for general public licence or in other words freeware. Programs under this licence are created by the community for the community. They do not offer as much support as commertial company products, but they are usually free of charge and and there is a wide community on the internet in case you encounter any problems. From those reasons I decided to use Inkscape (http://inkscape.org/) in version 0.47 (the latest stable version in time of publication of this thesis) for all vector based graphic and GIMP in version 2.6.8 (again the latest stable version in time of publication of this thesis) for all bitmap based graphic. Another reason for choosing those programs is their low hardware requirements. You do not need a powerful and thus expensive computer to create any of the graphics presented in this tutorial. In fact most of it was created on Ion platform Lenovo netbook S10e.
2.3 Inkscape basics We will be creating this:
33 The basic settings of the Inkscape will be sufficient for our purpose. Inkscape uses keyboard shortcuts to speed up teachers work and there is a list of shortcuts in th Help menu.
Workspace of Inkscape
Inkscape works mainly with Tools and Dialogues. With those you can create objects and further manipulate them.
34 Object with Fill and Stroke dialogue
Every object could be turned into so called paths (Shift+Ctrl+C) and further adjusted with nodes. There are several types of nodes. Each one of them affect the path in a slightly different way as shown in a picture.
35 Object with all kinds of nodes.
We will use layers in our work. One for characters, one for background and one for balloons. So open a layer dialogue and add a layer and name it Background and then create a second layer in the same way and name it Characters and then a third one called Balloons. In the first step we will produce are characters. I chose rather complex characters to show you the possibilities and methods you can use. I decided to call the first character Láďa. Lets work on him first. In the OOTS style the characters have rather circular head. Select circle tool (F5) and create a circle. If you hold Ctrl the shape will be regular. Next step will be body of Láďa. Start with the rectangle tool (F4) and create rectangle. Switch to Node tool (F2) and transform rectangle into path (Shift+Ctrl+C) to further manipulate it. Add few more nodes by clicking on the lines for Laďa's future hands. Then move the nodes in order to create hands. Try to experiment with the nodes types to achieve required shape. You will be able to create almost any shape with this method. So let's do Laďa's pants (without pockets for the time being). We have few objects in a layer, but not in order we wish. We can change that with so called Z-order buttons. It will change the order of objects withing the boundaries of one layers. You can switch the order of objects and also a selection of more objects. Now put Laďa's head on top. And organize the rest of the objects to resemble Láďa. When we know the basics of object creation, we can create pockets. Create one pocket with Rectangle and Node tool. Then press Ctrl+D to duplicate the pocket instead of usual Ctrl+C Ctrl+V routine. Then flip the pocket horisontaly by pressing H and move the pocket into the right possition. You will save substantial amounths of time with Duplicate and Flip functions when creating objects like hands or anything that could be 'mirrored'. Select all the parts of the pants with Select tool (F1) and press Group selection button(Ctrl+G). Now try to change the size of Pants selection with the small black arrows around the object. If you click on the object the arrows will change and instead of changing size, you will be able to rotate or skew the selection. As you can see Láďa in the example picture has black and blue stripes on his sweatsuit, but our Láďa has just one colour on his. Inkscape has a possibility of putting
36 patterns on objects or group of objects. Open Fill and stroke dialogue (Shift+Ctrl+F) and select pattern fill. There is a short selection of preset patterns. None of them suits our purpose, so you will have to create your own pattern. It is possible to transform an object or group of objects into patterns and vise versa. Create a stripe with Rectangle tool (F4) and duplicate it(Ctrl+D). Align the duplicated stripe to the original and repeat the procedure until you have 6 or 7 stripes next to each other. You can adjust their alighnment with Alighn and Distribute dialogue (Shift +Ctrl+A). (picture of Distribute dialogue). Select every second stripe and change it's colour in Fill and Stroke dialogue (Shift+Ctrl+F) by selecting a Flat colour button or simply by clicking on the appropriate colour (in Láďa's case one of the darker blue shades) in palette menu. Then select all thus created stripes and convert them to pattern in Object menu, patterns, object to pattern (Alt+I).
Stripes grouped together ready to be trasformed into pattern
37 Select Láďa's sweatshirt again and look up our new pattern in Fill and Stroke dialogue. You will find it under 'pattern-random-number' name. Now select the Node tool (F2) and adjust the pattern on the object. Láďa's pants has trendy blue camouflage pattern. It would be possible to create such a pattern from objects, but it would be difficult and time consuming. We will use a bitmap instead. I downloaded this pattern (thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_48/1143081399STM9bu.jpg). It was not difficult to find it, I simply googled 'blue camouflage' and searched for pictures. You have to import bitmap (File, import.. or Ctrl+I) in order to use it. Then simply select imported bitmap, turn it to pattern (Alt+I) and use on pants group of objects (Fill and Stroke dialogue). Pants are finished now. Shoes are created in a similar way with a few exceptions. Start with rectangle tool (F4) and Node tool (F2) to create the basic shape of one shoe. The white stripes in example picture are in fact rectangle objects with their black outline removed. To do such a thing, select a Fill and Stroke dialogue and select Stroke paint and No paint button. All object have by default black outline. Of course create just one stripe and duplicate (Ctrl+D) the rest. Sole is created in the same way – as an rectangle object turned to path and adjusted to desired shape, this time with standard black outline. Basic shape, stripes and sole has to be in right order so use Z-order tools. Then select every object of the shoe and group it (Ctrl+G) then duplicate the shoe. Flip (H) the new shoe and adjust its size with selection tool (F1) and move it into right position. Now we have identical shoes in no time! Hat is created in the same way with one exception. I only started with Ellipse,arc tool (F5) instead of rectangle tool. To create a hem of the hat I used Pencil tool (F6) to create a line and reshaped it with node tool (F2) into curve. Then I grouped the curve with the object of the hat. Eyes are easy to produce with basic Ellipse tool, without any further adjustments (Except colour of course). Láďa has two trendy badges on his hat. One has a Union Jack on it and the second a scull. Union Jack could be created as an object, but again it would be time consuming. We will use a bitmap again but in a different way. Lets create a circle with ellipse tool (F5) while holding Ctrl to create circle instead of ellipse. Then import bitmap of Union Jack. Again any picture from the web would suffice. This time the size
38 of picture doesn't really matter because the badge is small. Place the Union Jack under the previously created circle and resize it with selection tool to fit the Union Jack in circle. Then select both the bitmap and the circle. Then choose Object, Clip and Set and the only visible parts of the Union Jack are those in the circle. One badge finished. This is another method how to apply bitmap to our vector graphic. You can create the Union Jack badge with pattern method as well. The scull badge could be created in many ways. We will create it by transforming objects. Create a circle by Ellipse tool (F5). Duplicate it (Ctrl+D) and colour the lower one black. Make the 'upper' one smaller and colour it white and set it's outline to none (in Fill and stroke dialouge, Shift+Ctrl+F). Now we have background and the scull itself. Turn the 'scull' into paths (Shift+Ctrl+C), add few nodes to create teeth. The problem is with the eyes sockets. We have to create holes in an object. To do something like that create two circles (F5) and position them where the sockets should be. Select (F1) one 'socket' circle and a scull and then choose Path, Difference (Ctrl +-). Do the same with the second socket and holes are ready. Last thing to do on the skull is the eyebrows (to fit the scull into the OOTS style). We will use the same method but instead of circles for eyes use small rectangles. It is possible to create the sockets just with the two circles coloured black and grouped to the scull object, but this method is somehow cleaner, leaving the whole graphic with less objects. Also if you resize the scull you can encounter problem with the width of the outlines. Basically the more objects, the more problems are likely to occur and with this method the whole badge consist of only two objects in the end. Láďa still lacks his hood, Horsefeathers logo, a backpack and a mouth. Backpack and mouth are simple enough, just to path converted from objects in case of the mouth and group of objects in case of backpack webings. Hood is assembled from two objects – two sides of cloth of the hood. The inner side is black and the outer has the same pattern as the sweatshirt. It is hard to make the shape right from the example pictures but the hood is clearly visible on other pictures in the projects.(See Practical part chapter 3.3) I created the outer part first and then duplicated and slightly arranged the nodes to create the right look and arrange it's z-order. Horsefeathers logo is also not hard to create. You can combine it from rectangles, duplicate, z-order it and change colour to the lower piece to create that nice whit “shadow“ effect. And Láďa is finished. Congratulations! Let's call the second character Mei. We can use Láďa's eyes, backpack and also
39 head circle for Mei. Just adjust the colour to slightly yellow. The female body in OOTS style could be created from a rectangle by manipulating nodes or with other tools like path manipulations we tried on sockets in Láďa's Scull Badge. You can combine, cut and divide objects in several ways. But this method doesn't work with bitmaps and groups of objects. This is other reason to make things as simple as possible. For example if you want to cut Láďa's scull badge in three peaces (somebody stepped on it or something like that), you would have to cut every part of it one by one. That is why we try to keep the number of objects low, because next time we use them, we might need to cut them or combine with something else. Let's return to Mei. I personaly created her body by turning a rectangle into path(Shift+Ctrl+C) and adjusting it's nodes. Her t-shirt is just a copy of the body with a V-neck cutted with one of the path manipulation tools (Ctrl+-). Another think is the pattern on her t-shirt. I created that in the same way as Láďa's sweatshirt with object to pattern method. Only instead of stripes I created flowers from circles and ellipses (F5) and a background white rectangle – again nothing difficult. Her pants and shoes are created with the same regular objects-turned-to-path- and-manipulated method. Her hands and legs are a different matter. They are not objects, but just lines.You can create them with Freehand tool (F6) or Pen tool (Shift+F6) and adjust by Fill and stroke dialogue(Shift+Ctrl+F). The lines have one disadvantage: They cannot be used to cut or modify objects with path manipulations. Only objects could be used to e. g. be combined with other objects. Or more precisely lines could be combined but as long as the line is just a connection between two points with no actual thickness (even if its stroke style looks like it has thickness) it does not affect the object in any way.
40 Lines with different stroke styles.
Mei's cell phone is created from rectangle objects (F4). It is possible to adjust the shape of the corners of the rectangle with node tool(F2) without changing the object to path. But this setting does not keep the proportion of the curve if you rescale the object. So if you want to prevent that, finish the cell phone with convert to path command (Shift+Crtl+C). Then the shape will survive any changes in size.
The last think to do on the characters is to change the colour of the backpack. Congratulations, you have just created Mei and learnt basic object manipulation tricks, sufficient enough to create any OOTS style character. If this is still not enough for you,
41 there are other things you can try, like manipulation of opacity and blur of the objects in Fill and stroke dialogue (Shift+Ctrl+F) or other things in various tutorials on the web. Select Láďa and group (Ctrl+G) all his objects and then do the same with all Mei's objects. Our comics is far from complete, still the hard work is finished. Let's move to background layer. We will create classroom with blackboard, desk and picture of Mr. President and borders of the whole strip. You can switch the visibility of layer with Láďa and Mei and lock the layer in order not to disturb us and prevent unwanted manipulation. Don't worry we will make them visible and adjust the size and position both pupils into our comic classroom in appropriate time. The borders of the comics is composed from 4 lines (F6) grouped together (Ctrl+G). Then enter Fill and stroke dialogue and increase the width of the stroke. If you select the whole group (F1) and resize it, you will see that the width of the lines also changes. That could be a problem if we want to use that frame for other comics or keep the width the same without constantly adjusting the size. There are buttons in Inkscape that adjust those functions. See picture bellow:
Try those new functions and let's move to the class background itself. Do not worry if the objects you are going to create fit the frame or not. It is possible to adjust the shape of each object, but that is time consuming and we will use another faster method. For the time being create the shapes of the room. It could be created from two rectangles, one greenish for the floor, second light
42 brown for the wall. Z-order those objects to one another, then group them (Ctrl+G) and then Z- order the whole group to the back. Don't worry about the size. Everything should be possible to adjust. Blackboard is just a black rectangle. Again just create it and do not worry about its position. The table is again created in the same way as the background. Just the desk itself is converted to path and its nodes adjusted to create the perspective of the desk. The problem is that if you have created the frame in the OOTS style cartoony style, then the room and the table and the blackboard does not fit it. There are parts of the rectangles out of the frame. We will use the same method as with Union Jack on Láďa's badge. This time create a rectangle that would fit the frame exactly, z-order it on top, then select it and all the objects we want in the frame and then go Object, Clip, Set. Now lets make Láďa and Mei visible and unlock their layer. Duplicate (Ctrl+D) Láďa and move new Láďa to some free space or lock all other layers, so we can manipulate him. We are about to create that cutout, where are the badges and part of the blackboard. Also duplicate the frame of the comics and scale it down, to create that white frame – you can even give it some different colour, some visible. Also duplicate the blackboard. Ungroup (Ctrl+U) new Láďa and choose every object from him except the badges and the hat and delete it (Del).Position the rest needed for the cutout with the duplicate of the blackboard and again clip it with some rectangle fit for our frame. Then position the frame and group (Ctrl+G) it with the rest of the cutout. Group it and position in our comics. Last thing to do is the most important – Mr. President. We have to import his bitmap picture scale it down and adjust it position. There are plenty of pictures of our president on the net. Try to use some with higher resolution (See Practical part chapter ). Create the rectangle that would be the frame of compulsory presidential photo in every classroom. And set the bitmap in the middle. We want Mr. President in exact middle, but to position his photo manualy would be time consuming. Select Mr. President and his frame. We will use the Align and distribute dialogoue (Shift+Ctrl+A) and choose one of the icons Mr. President is at his usual place and your class should look as in the tutorial picture. Congratulations! Save your work for now. Last thing to do is the text balloons and date on the board. Text ballons are easy ellipses created with ellipse tool (F5) combined (Ctrl +) with a rectangle turned to path (Shift+Ctrl+C) with one node erased for trialgle shape. Whole new object could be
43 further adjusted with nodes. Text on the board and in the ballons is to be created with Text tool (F8). Text could be adjusted as text in a word processor or as an object. The font used is Comic Sans MS. Before you adjust the colour to white move the text to on some contrast background in order not to loose it.
2.5 Comics Portfolio Láďa and Mei are quite difficult characters and it takes some time to produce them. But your characters don't have to be that complex. Another way to save time is to create your own OOTS style Comics Portfolio.
See Appendix 1.
As you can see it is a set of different faces, haircuts, eyes, paraphernalia, body parts, backgrounds, speech and thought balloons, frames and such. After you created this with the tools used in our first tutorial, you will be able to create large amounts of characters or whole comics from those parts. Each set of eyes, smile, or clothes should be grouped (Ctrl+G) if it consist of more than one object. This will help further manipulation. You can use parts from Láďa and Mei, if you saved your work as basis for your portfolio. Then when you design some activity with comics or pictures in general, you just have to open your portfolio, select (F1) every part you are going to use and copy it (Ctrl+C). Then open new inkscape document, paste (Ctrl+V) and then assemble the comics from the parts.
2.6 GIMP tutorial GIMP works differently from Inkscape. It manipulates the pixels of a bitmap graphic. I chose Garfield comic strip as an example. You can download this picture from here5. It is a bitmap in gif format 900x264 pixels. And we want to get the character of the cat out for our comic portfolio because we can use it in some printed strip for our pupils.
5 http://www.gocomics.com/garfield/2010/04/06/
44 And our goal is this:
But first of all we have to introduce the GIMP itself. As it was said above, GIMP works with bitmaps. Its workplace looks similar and the basic functions like saving, loading images is same as in other Windows programs. However it's tools are in separate window as well as the Channels, Layers and so on window.
45 Gimp workplace without actual image to manipulate.
GIMP basically manipulates pictures in two ways. Through tools like pencil, brush, eraser and so on you can manipulate the image directly with his mouse. This method is not the best, because it was ment for tablet use. With it, it is possible to manipulate the picture, even draw one from a scratch. But it is not the aim of this tutorial. The second way how GIMP manipulates with pictures is through masks and filters. Mask is in fact a selection of some part of the image and there are few mask tools you can work with, selecting just what she wants. In this case Garfield in the second panel. Another
46 important feature of GIMP are layers. They are separate pictures one over another that allow you to work with things in one layer, not affecting things in other layers. Filters on the other hand affext the picture as a whole. There is wide variety of filters available and you can try some on Garfield.
Menu with filters.
Few pictures of applied filters.
47 First of all we have to change format of colours of the picture, for some reason the downloaded picture is in Indexed format of colours (there are other types like RGB or CMYK but it is not important unless you want to print her comics as book in industrial printing company.) GIMP's filters and other tools work only with RGB colour mode. Go to menu Picture ->Mode->RGB. To start the work on Garfield, we have to select him. In Inkscape we would have to create such an object that would fit his shape and it would serve as mask for cropping or we would have to use other tools like tracing bitmap, but that would take a long time to do. Here you will use mask.
It is possible to invert mask (Ctrl+I), so we will try to select everything around Garfield
48 to make out his shape and then invert the mask, selecting the cat itself. Pick Magic wand mask tool (U) that selects into mask pixels with the same of similar colour. It is possible to change the sensitivity of the selection – the colours selected will be less similar. Adjust the sensitivity to something around 50 and click on the wall Garfield is standing in front of. Then select the floor but when you click, hold Shift also, it would add newly selected area to the existing mask. Switch to the rectangle (R) or ellipse (E) mask and work the same way every other place of the comics except Garfield. When you are done, push Del button and it will erase everything, except the cat. Mask works in that way, that all tools aplied work only within the mask, you can try that later with brush tool. It will not be possible to apply “paint” outside mask. Teacher have a coloured Garfiled in a mask that mathces his shape. We have to turn him into gray scale. We do this, because turning to gray scale, or to decolourize is the most usual thing you will do with GIMP. Inkscape can decolour, but only objects, not imported bitmaps. Colour print is more expensive then black and white print and that is why when you are about to print a comics handout, it is necessary to make the picture black and white, or gray scale. This is done through menu Colours → Decolour. We have decolourized Garfield on the white background. Our picture has only one layer. If you imported the bitmap to Inkscape at this stage, she would still have to create the mask, because the white background would still be here. We want just Garfield. So if you still have Garfield under mask, she presses Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. Look at the Layers and etc. panel and we can see new Inserted layer. It is just temporary, if you click anywhere around it, the inserted layer will become part of the previous layer again. Right-click on the inserted layer and choose New layer. That will make inserted layer permanent. This layer includes only Garfield without background. Teacher can right-click on the background layer and select delete layer. The white background disappears and is replaced with gray rectangles -they represent transparent background with no colour. Our Garfield has now no background but it is still in large picture (900x264). That is not necessary. Select Picture manu → Adjust canvas to layer. That will shrink the picture. Now save your work. Standard format of GIMP is xcf. But it is not possible to import that format to Inkscape, so select File → Save as... and in roll out menu select png. Special menu will appear. You can select compression or quality of the file. We want Garfield to look good so keep the highest quality and just press OK. Zoom in (Z for zoom tool. Click to zoom in, Click+Ctrl to zoom out) to see if
49 you have just garfield and transparent background. If there are still some coloured pixels left, that do not belong to Garfield, press ctrl+shift +A to deselect the mask and then press Shift+E to select eraser, pick the size of the brush (some smaller one) and delete unwanted pixels. If you manage to delete some important parts of Garfield, press Ctrl+Z to go one step back (This works for GIMP, OpenOffice and Inkscape alike). Save as png again and you are finished.
2.7 On scanning and printing There are things that are hard to produce in Inkscape. Bitmap is the answer for it and the easiest way to get them is to download them. But when the topic is specific, personal of simply does not exist in digital form (e. g. pupils want to use some of their pictures in their project) teacher has to scan. In another words bring non-digital material into digital form. This could be done with digital camera, event camera in your mobile phone as I have seen in Study room of Pedagogical Faculty, MU in Brno. But the quality of such pictures was horrible and there is very little you can do to improve it. The best device to use is the scanner. They are cheap and are incorporated in multifunctional printers like Canon Pixma MX 3306. The basic rule for scanning is to scan as best as we can, because every mistake or inaccuracy will take much more time to repair. As it was mentioned in theoretical part, each bitmap is characterized by “the width and height of the image in pixels“(See Theoretical part p. 3) We call this resolution, e.g. 800x600 meaning that picture has 800 pixels long and 600 pixels high. But what does that mean? How large is this pixel, how many centimeters it has? The point is that pixel has no defined size in centimeters. It is just a dot of imaging device. So pixel on 10'' LCD panel of netbook is smaller then pixel on school data projector. Both devices can have the same resolution but when we let them display the same image it will have different size on panel and on data projector. That is the relativity of digital environment. When we scan we have to decide the resolution of the digital pictures. We decide how many pixels will our 13x9cm photo have. The number of pixels in some length unit is usually called DPI – dots per inch. The rule is that the more the better. DPI represent the real size of digital image. Usual DPI of scanners is 300 DPI. So when scanning, use the maximum DPI possible. When we scan we also have to save our data and here comes other problem. We have to choose format. This choice
6 http://www.canon.cz/For_Home/Product_Finder/Multifunctionals/Inkjet/PIXMA_MX330/index.asp
50 affects the quality of the picture and of course the size of the file in Mb. If you are scanning pictures from books or photos, basically images of some sort, always save into image formats like TIFF, JPEG or RAV, not into PDF file! The choice of image format depends on the scanning software your scanner is using. Formats of bitmaps usually incorporate some kind of compression to save space on your hard-drive.(See http://www.acasystems.com/en/web-thumb-activex/faq-image- format.htm) Also the bigger the image, the more demanding (in sense of hardware requirements) the manipulation with it. We have to decide how compressed our image will be. For our purposes no or small compression without loosing quality is the good option. We can also choose the depth of colours used. It means the number of colours the picture will have. Human eye can register around 16 millions of colours so we should use at least this possibility or higher settings. It is also possible to save the picture in greyscale. But I do not recomand it, because it is easy to turn the picture gray later, but almost impossible to colour it again. The main reason for keeping our bitmap pictures in high resolution (e. g. 3000x2000 for normal size photo – it means that it has 6 Megapixels – number you can find in specifications of your camera) is the fact that it is possible to get the bitmap picture smaller and not loose the quality, but it is not possible to enlarge the bitmap picture without loosing quality. Compare the pictures here:
Picture in normal size.
51 Zoomed-in picture.
The printing is the opposite process – turning digital picture into real shape – to paper. We already know that our pictures has some resolution and the imaging devices have some resolution. DPI of our printer will tell us the size of picture it can print. In fact it tells us the resolution of the paper page. The usual problem is that we have some nice looking bitmap on the computer and when we print it it is either too small or to grainy. It is because the „resolution” of the page is bigger then the resolution of usual imaging device. From what we know it seem that if we scan a picture in 300 DPI it would be sufficient with the printer that has also 300 DPI. In fact the printer should have greater DPI. It is because of the way the printer is producing colours of the picture. It has to put it together from basic CMYK colours. It means that one digital dot that has some colour has to be composed from certain number of real dots that would create the colour. To conclude this part I recomand to save your picture in as high resolution as possible, so that when you have to print it or incorporate in vector graphic, you will not loose the quality of those bitmaps and the pictures you are about to produce.
2.8 On Camstudio Camstudio is easy to use. You have to decide if you are going to record the whole fullscreen or just a specified area of it in Region menu. Then push the record button and
52 start “acting” what you need. You can pause the recording. When you stop it, the program will ask you to save your work into avi file. You can change various setting in options menu. I found useful to set the program to minimize after start of recording. It is also possible to record your voice – or even some music, but I do not recommend that for a school presentation. Before you start to record your work, try it few times and if it is a longer presentation even make a script.
Picture of Camstudio
3 Projects and activities
3.1 Six most famous things about the country Level: Beginner Time: 3 lessons (45 minutes each) Learning objectives: To train finding of relevant information about target countries and sorting it according to importance. Resources: Envelopes, paper, comics about France, travel guides in English, digital environment, scissor, paste
Warm – up: Cut prepared comics about France (Czech student/tourist visiting sights in France – from the least famous to the most famous e.g. Eiffel tower. There should be some written information in every panel.) into individual panels and then show the panels to the class (The whole strip could be projected on overhead projector or IWB) and let them guess what country is depicted. The sooner they discover the country the better. This could be of course done with IWB, each panel could be saved as individual picture in separate cbr archive and shown on IWB.
53 First picture – Typical house
Second picture - Gallery
54 Third picture – Modern architecture
Fourth picture – Metro
55 Fouth picture - Pyramid
56 Last picture to show, the Eiffel tower
Teaching: Divide the class into small groups of 3-4 pupils. Each group should have its spokesperson. Let each group draw one of the prepared envelope with the country. Instruct the groups not to tell the name of the country to pupils from other groups. Their task is to prepare similar comic strip with hints what country they have. Each group should work in different corner of the class to prevent cheating. The group then write- brainstorm famous sights assigned country. The group should decide which sights to choose for their 6-panel comic strip. If they don't have enough information there is the travel guide or PC connected to the net (allow only web sites in English) to help them. In the first lesson pupils create the script of their comics, with all the text, with layout and of course they should know the sights or pictures they will be using during the next lesson.
The creation of comics itself takes place during the second lesson and possibly as homework. After you explain what are the pupils supposed to do brainstorm the vocabulary needed for creation of comics. Do this in both languages to pinpoint missing vocabulary. It's lack would prevent pupils to use target language during the creation process. There are more ways, how to create such a comics. And it depends on the teacher and digital environment at her disposal which to choose: a) Minimal digital variant uses only data projector for the example comics and even that could be eliminated – if the teacher prints it out. The rest of the work with stick figures drawing and photos of sights or even drawings of sights or important features of the country could be done. The advantage is clear: it is possible to use larger groups that would work on one comics (4-5 pupils) and of course if there is no digital environment available the project still could be done. Because we want pupils to communicate in target language only we have to pre-teach some vocabulary connected with drawing and scripting of the comics, but basically pupils know the most of it at this level. Pupils use travel guides or travel agency brochures. If the teacher want to the work done as real project, she can let the pupils get the brochures and material themselves as homework– they should be sure what they need after the first lesson. Or if the teacher wants to use more task-based approach, she can provide the materials herself. In the end of the lesson the groups should have panels of their comics cut into peaces and ready for presentation
57 in the same way as warm up activity. Instruct the pupils to make the pictures large enough for the presentation. b) Medium digital variant combines requires digital environment for presentation of example warm-up activity and also pupils are supposed to get the information and pictures they need from internet sources. The script making process could be either digital or on paper. This variant uses the standard three member groups. If the process is digital, prevent pupils from using translator tools by strict monitoring. The creation of the comics itself is still in paper form, but pupils can print out pictures they found on the internet. The vocabulary needed here for communication will probably include some basic computer terminology connected to internet searching. In the end of the lesson the groups should have panels of their comics cut into peaces and ready for presentation in the same way as warm up activity. Instruct the pupils to make the pictures large enough for the presentation. c) Full digital variant uses digital environment in warm-up stage, during the script production stage and also in final comics creation stage. It should be said that this variant is meant for pupils used to work within the digital environment. Because the comics will be created on one computer, it is better to have smaller groups or pairs. So that the production phase will not be done by just one person of the creation team. Pupils are not required to create the comics from scratch. They are given the comics portfolio and use material from it to put the comics together. Pupils should be aware of the fact during the script creation. It is vital for the process to pre-teach the vocabulary connected with Inkscape. If the pupils are unfamiliar with Inkscape environment and the teacher still wants to proceed with the project, there should be one more lesson dedicated to exercise the work with this program and comics portfolio. The comics about France could be used as an example comics during this lesson. Teacher could use Camstudio during the creation process to illustrate the process. In the end of the lesson the groups should have panels of their comics ready in form of jpg pictures numbered 001, 002 etc. in folder with the name of the group. The teacher should compile the pictures into cdr (or similar) archive. This last step include work with several programs and it is a question whether to teach the pupils basic work with those programs or not. Check with the IT teacher whether the pupils know how to manipulate Winrar and file extensions and if they can, let them do the last phase as well. Before the last lesson all
58 groups should have cbr (or similar) archives deposited on teacher's computer ready for presentation.
In the last lesson the groups present their comics in a similar way as warm-up activity and let other groups guess their country. After presentation of all groups discuss the choices of each group, let the others suggest alternative solutions and let them assemble the parts of the comic strip into posters in case of variants a and b. With the variant c the pupils could create one document with all the panels and print it out or keep it in the digital form only because printing in A3 or larger format is financially demanding.
3.2 Critical incidents Level: beginner - lower intermediate Learning objectives: To explore differences between cultures and need for awareness in encounter situations. Time: 1-2 lessons, depends on the size of the class. Resources: comic strip with Critical incidents, answer sheets,
In this case it is not a project but an activity because there is no physical outcome like poster. Pupils are confronted with a critical incident in cross-cultural encounter. Description of such incident would be too difficult for pre-A2 pupils. Comics on the other hand wouldn't. There would be minimum of critical vocabulary to pre-teach.
Warm-up: Show the class a comic strip with joke understandable only with some knowledge of American culture or the teacher presents them with story that include critical incident. In case of comics let them translate the comic strip. And ask them questions that would guide them to conclusion that each culture has it's own humour and habits.
Teaching: Pupils read the comics and then fill in the answer sheet (which could be again in form of comics – if the answers would be too difficult). Follow up could discussion on possible solutions (probably in Czech) and minirole-play of agreed on solution.
59 Accepting a compliment
60 Addressing the teacher
61 Attending a party
62 „Accepting a compliment
1 Why did Usa look down when the teacher complimented her? a. She was ashamed of her work. b. She was embarrased by the teacher's compliment. c. She was trying to show respect to the teacher. d. She didn't like the teacher.
2 Why did Linda decide not to give Usa any more compliments? a. She decided that Usa really was not a good student. b. Usa's behaviour was disrespectful. c. Usa didn't seem to be pleased with the compliment. d. She expected Usa to say something like “Thank you”.
Addressing the teacher
1 Why did Liliana call Alan Jones “Teacher”? a. She didn't know his name. b. She was trying to show respect. c. She couldn't pronounce his name. d. She felt comfused.
2 Why did Alan Moore ask Liliana not to call him “Teacher”? a. He didn't really like being a teacher. b. He wanted to be friendly. c. In his country, only very young pupils call their teacher “Teacher”. d. He thought Liliana was being rude.
Attending a party
1 Why all the students leave together? a. They didn't like the late nights. b. There was no more food. c. They were doing what was normal for them.
63 d. They had an invitation to another party.
2 Why did Martha decide never to invite these students to her house again? a. She felt insulted, because they all left at once. b. They have eaten all the food. c. They stayed too late. d. They hadn't brought her a present.”(Tomalin 1993 84-87)
Acknowledgement: Adapted from Cultural Awareness
3.3 Headline comics Learning objectives: To familiarize students with block language on something more familiar to them then normal newspaper – teenager magazines. In cultural awareness follow-up the objective is to familiarize pupils with their own culture represented in the media close to them and contrasted to media in different cultures. Time: 2-4 lessons (45 minutes) Resources: headlines from Czech and British (or other coutries) magazines for teenagers, preferably for boys and for girls, computer classroom for digital variant.
Warm-up: Show the class a comics strip and let each pair create a headline for such a comics. Monitor and let pupils present few examples. I advise to use comic strip the pupils are familiar with from previous reading. (e. g. from school comics library.)
Teaching: Divide the class into groups of 3-5 and let the groupleader draft an envelope
64 with a headline. Each group creates the outline of article with 5 points. You have to instruct them to do so silently without other groups knowing and then let them create a comic strip instead of writing the whole article. That should be done in the first lesson. Again there is digital and paper variant of comics creation, however both expect the groups to create the scripts together. I advice to brainstorm or pre-teach the vocabulary needed, if the pupils are not familiar with it. The headlines featured are just examples. The topics change rapidly so I advise to browse the magazines or even better ask the pupils to bring their own magazines before you start the projects and pick from them and translate.
Example headlines:
How do you care for your "mane"?
How small mammals defeated giant dinosaurs?
Vladivojna La Chia: Training first, then pop.
ABC on Fingerboarding day.
Break up in Gossip Girl! Jessica Szohr and Ed Westwick, they are pair no more! a) Digital variant requires that each pupil of the group works on one panel of the comics -article according to the script they have agreed on together. This could be a disadvantage – because it prevents students to engage in conversation on the other hand pupils train to work in digital environment. b) Paper variant allows pupils to work on the whole comics as a group and thus engage in target language practice.
The creation of the comics should take place during the second lesson and the presentation of their comics follows and the rest of the class has to find out the headline. It is good to let the other groups describe the comics to clarify the meaning.
Cultural awareness follow-up: When the comics are created, you can show the class magazines or extracts from websites for teenagers from different countries and let them recreate their comics in
65 order to be fasionable and acceptable in the country, culture shown in the begining. This should be done in groups and each group should have different culture. Each group present their comics and explain changes. Discussion about different culutres and their tastes could follow. There is a list of teen magazines on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_teen_magazines. And from cultural awareness might be interesting this magazine on http://www.muslimgirlmagazine.com/mgmag/
3.4 Music photo-comics history. Learning objectives: To familiarize student with music groups or singers of target language culture. To train presentation of ideas, work with Inkscape, search for valid information. Time: 2 lessons (45 minutes each) Resources: computer class, IWB, Teacher's favourite group photo comics.
Warm up: Let the pupils think of their favourite english speaking (or other language for that matter) singer or group. Then let them mingle and find out other pupils favourites. Pupils should write down what other groups or singers are “in“ in the class.
Teaching: Show the pupils your own favourite group or singer with prepared comics about the most important facts about the group. Let them read it and check if they understand with questions. Divide the class into groups of 3. Pupils next task is to create a similar comics about the group or singer the group agreed on. Each group should have 4-6 pictures as shown in the example.
66 The doors photo comics
In the first stage of this activity pupils look for information about the group on the
67 internet. When they gather the most important facts, they start looking for the pictures that would illustrate previously gathered facts. Pupils create a script with all the text and layout of the comics. The second stage is creation of the comics in Inkscape itself. Pupils import all of their pictures and adjust their shape and layout of the comics on the page. Pupils learn to create text bubbles in Inkscape and fill them with text according to their previously created scripts. Camstudio could be used for presentation of tutorial. Important steps should be on the blackboard at disposal for pupils at all time. During the third stage pupils see each others' comics and look for the most interesting information from the projects. The discussion about what make the most interesting comics interesting could follow.
4 Piloting of the projects. Due to the nature of some of the projects, mainly the fact that they take more than two lessons to complete, depending on pupils knowledge of Inkscape in case of fully digital variant of the projects, and involvement of schools digital environment, which usually serves not only to teachers of English, it was not possible to pilot all of the projects. We can look on the presented projects as on a connection between English and ICT. That connection would have to be a part of School Educational Program of the school where I would pilot the projects. Projects were created during the school year and therefore it would not be possible to incorporate them in school SEP even if the author would be a member of staff of such a school. Because of that I was able to pilot only the less time consuming projects.
4.1 Music photo-comics history I taught this project on ZŠ Křídlovická, Brno that incorporate extended education of Mathematics, IT and Physics and that uses elements of Dalton plan. That means that it's pupils are more used to digital environment and various types of project work. It was possible to use this project with eight-graders. The group was relatively large as the it consists of parts of two classes. It proved hard to monitor all the groups and check if everybody used the target language. The computer classroom was designed in a way that pupils looked at computers around the wall. It was difficult to get their attention while they set to some task. I had
68 to shout to get it in fact. It would be much better if the computers and thus students were facing the teacher and the IWB. The project went through 2 lessons and problem occured when some groups missed key members of their group. The warm up activity proved to be success. The class identified few modern and even some old groups and pop-stars. I was told by the supervising teacher that pupils have some kind of permanent groups for work in project. Those were different then the groups that formed around the popular english-speaking music groups and singers. That led to discussion between students in their project-groups about the star of their interest. It was hard to keep the conversation in target language but every group decided. The task for each group was to create a script for their photo-comics. I had a comics of my own as an example on usb hard drive. The problem occured as the hard drive did not work with the computer of the teacher. I had to show it to the students on the display of my net book which was not ideal but I managed to get the idea of the photo comics across. Because all the other instructions were on the hard drive – it means unaccessible I had to tell it to the class. Everyone started to look for the pictures without any regard to the script. I had to go from group to group and correct them. But I regard this to the faulty hardware. That would also be my advice- always check the hardware before you start teaching. But this was special occasion since this was my teaching practice and I had no chance settle in local digital environment. Groups worked relatively well on downloading their pictures and working on their scripts. The good thing was that they had no problem looking up the information, but they did that in mother tongue and no correcting could bring them to do that in target language. Few groups even used translator to create their sentences. But by the end of the lesson every group had a script or at least a clear idea about it. If they did not manage to do their task during the lesson, they had to do it as homework assignment. The next lesson went on more smoothly because I managed to fix the problem with hardware. It was necessary, because in the second lesson of the project the pupils were tasked to create the comics itself according to their already created scripts. Some groups had not their members and thus scripts, but they managed to create them during the lesson. The pupils did not know how to work with Inkscape. I knew that from the starts so I used the photo-comics version of the project. It is easy to produce and also easy to
69 teach. I showed the pupils the basics of Inkscape on the IWB and pupils tried few basic moves – to import bitmaps, to create text and bubbles and also to crop the bitmaps. I had to pre-teach some vocabulary so that the group talk and work together. Each group started to work and asked questions. The disadvantage proved to be that they could work only on one computer. Some groups were able to manage their work, so that every member of the group had some work – somebody was reading the script, next one was downloading the pictures and the third one was completing the comics in Inkscape. Pupils had some very interesting ideas about the layout of their comics and I had to show them other techniques to satisfied their needs. But the results were worth it. Some groups of more computer native pupils were finished before the end of the lesson, so I tasked them with searching for information of other group's topics. There was some problems with less computer native pupils. It would be better to create the groups according to the computer nativity of pupils – to create mixed groups. But that would require previous knowledge of the class. And in the regard of computer nativity, even the supervising teacher did not have the relevant information. So there were good and better groups. Then came the end of the lesson and it was not possible to discuss the results of the projects and start presentation of the photo-comics. That was the task for supervising teacher.
4.2 Critical incidents I was teaching in the same class as before. The interesting thing happened during the start of the lesson. The pupils turn on the computers as soon as they got into class, even if they knew that the next class is English. There was no probmem to make them turn at least screens off. Again there were more pupils then expected. The class was joined together with few students from different class. That made the room full of students, but it did not make the pairwork impossible.Although it changed the clima of the class, as I have been told by the supervising teacher. There were some “troublemakers“ present, but there was no problem with them. On the other hand the difference in levels of English was visible in some cases. There was no connection between the cultural awareness topic of the project and what the pupils did in their regular lessons. So I used the fact that the lesson was the
70 first one after Easter and I used Easter story of a two American females that went sightseeing to Prague on Easter Monday and were beaten with the Easter sticks. The ladies called the police and the policemen had to convince them at the station that the people with the sticks just pursued their national custom and did not want to assault them. The ladies dropped their charges in the end. I used the story to depict cultural shock and critical incident. The pupils had to figure out what happened to the ladies to confirm that they understood the story and the terms critical incidents. Then I had the questionnaire distributed and showed the comics on data projector. IWB was not necessary. The pictures and writing was clearly visible only when I zoomed the picture in, so the comics was not visible as a whole. I asked students to tell me when they are done reading. I think it sped up the reading as the fastest demanded the next picture and forced the slow readers to hurry up. Occasional smiles and laughs told me when the readers got to something funny in the comics. I planned that not only as a means of motivation, but also to confirm the pupil's understanding of the text. I let the pupils discuss the answers before they chose theirs and I wanted to explain or justify their choices. The monitoring helped a lot to make everybody speaking the target language but it would be more effective in smaller group (which was previously planned). The answers were usually correct in case of American culture- related questions. But still there were plenty of new information for the students I monitored the answer-creation process and then asked for answers promising pupils or those who paid less attention than they should. As the last procedure the pupils were asked to tell me the most important new information according to them so we managed to sum up the whole lesson. The original activity with the reading took about 30 minutes to intermediate pupils. I managed with B2 students in 45 minutes without pre-teaching more than 2 new words and explaining some more to those with less knowledge of vocabulary. The pupils expressed that the comics was “fun” and “nice”.
71 Conclusion The topic of this thesis evolved from simple comics creation suitable in SLA through complex project creation to final implementation of comics to learning process through digital environment. This process of evolution shows the problem of a teacher who wants to use some creative material in his teaching.
I realized that it is not possible to teach and draw comics for that teaching at the same time. I also realized that it is not possible to buy comics for my pupils, but I still wanted to use them in some way. So I tried to use computer programs at my disposal and created the Comics portfolio as a jigsaw puzzle or Lego®. It is easy to assemble a picture from parts taken from the portfolio, there is no need to really draw it. And that is not all. The comics, or picture could be manipulated during the class in many ways, even those not possible with the paper and blackboard.
Thus created comics – adapted material can help, and in non digital form of flashcards and pictures it is helping during the learning process. By introduction of Comics portfolio I tried to free the teacher from cumbersome loads of flashcards stuck on the blackboard. It does not mean the end of handouts and pictures for each pupil, but simple transition from paper and blackboard to IWB.
I have been reading internet-based comics for a long time, but it was Cary's work that opened my eyes concerning the use of comics in the classroom. And that is the other part of the thesis, the one concerning the original, unadapted comics. The thesis tries to answer simple question. How to get original comics to Czech pupils? And I think that I found the answer in digitisation of the old concept of classroom library. I gave the teacher the opportunity to download and show (not distribute) the comics.
All that allows the comics to be used as adapted or original material in the classroom and give pupils the opportunity to think about English not as something to learn, but as something that can bring them Spider-Man, Lio or Sin City (for those older ones).
72 Resumé The thesis basicaly tries to bring comics to the Czech class. It does so with the knowing that comics is the right educational material when used properly. It was proved in the theoretical part that comics is entertaining and can convey information much better than simple book. It was also proved that such a material is suitable in the environment of Czech classroom in conditions of FEP. But any reader can prove that to himself by reading any comics. The thesis pinpointed problems in introduction of comics to Czech classroom in unavailability of original comics and tried to find a suitable solution. That solution is to bring the comics through the digital environment. The piloting of the projects proved that it is possible to use comics in digital environment in Czech school.
It must be said that it would not be possible without considerable effort. The thesis tries to suggest procedures that save time, money and nerves during that effort. Namely use of vector graphic program Inkscape and OOTS graphic style. Those innovative teachers who feel that textbook, flashcards and graded readers are just too artificial for their pupils have now another possibility of bringing real English to the classroom with Comics Portfolio and Digital Comics Library without fear of braking the law.
To prove that comics are capable to convey any educational topic, five projects and activities are included in the practical part of the thesis on topic of cultural awareness. The theoretical part introduced methods and techniques used in those projects. The projects serve just as the example what could be done with the comics. The main part of the practical part introduces the teacher to the tools necessary for using digital environment effectively in form of tutorials.
However, the author is aware of the fact that digital environment is always changing and the procedures described above will be soon outdated, but still he feels the necessity of implementing the new and modern to the educational process.
Because I understand this thesis, with the tutorials, example comics and most of all the comic portfolio itself, mainly as a manual, I mean it to be freely accessible to all interested teachers. I hope it will help them to see the computer as a friendly tool not as an enemy.
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76 Appendix I I/1
Appendix I/2 I/3 I/4