Visual stories and the use of Comic Life as a tool:
In higher education, there are uses for visual stories from training for faculty to faculty using them to create lessons in their classrooms. Interestingly, a family member is a history teacher and he showed me a graphic novel he just bought on the Gettysburg Address. He was very excite about this as an exciting way to teach his students about this historic event. According to the article, Comics, the Canon, and the Classroom, younger children can associate a work with an image to help learn the meaning of that word. “Research suggesting that mixing words and images is a great way to foster comprehension and memory skills is bountiful” (Carter 48).
While explore the website for Comic Life, I stumbled upon an article by Janette Combs, from the College of William & Mary where she was very thorough in her various benefits of using comics in education. These range from engaging students in creating and writing, helps students organize through storyboarding, teaching students how to use visual imagery to convey meaning to a story or topic, and even develops composition techniques through visual-verbal connections (Combs, 2003).
Please enjoy my very short sample of a visual story called “Touring Alaska” on the following subpage.
Reference:
Carter, J. B. (2008). Comics, the canon, and the classroom. In N. Frey & D. Fisher (Eds.), Teaching Visual Literacy: Using comic books, graphic novels, anime, cartoons, and more to develop comprehension and thinking skills (pp. 47-60). Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.
Combs, J. (2003). Creating Comics: Visual & Verbal Thinking in the Ultimate Show & Tell. Williamsburg,: College of WIlliam & Mary, School of Education, Curriculum and Instruciton.