Toon Time

I'm on the Teacher/Librarian Ning, and a a member there (Lesley Edwards) posted that she'd been playing around with ToonDoo. I'd never heard of it, so thought I'd check out this interactive site that allows you to create your own cartoons. Now, I have an artistic deficit (stick figures are a challenge) that has been screaming for such a tool since Bill Putter, in 5th grade, looked at my picture of a deer and commented, "Nice dog."

The program allows you to choose from myriad characters, props and backgrounds, then type in your own speech bubbles, then email it, save it to your blog or del.icio.us, or myriad other options. The cartoon below is a great example of using this as a classroom tool. You could:

• Make cartoons about classroom rules/procedures
• Have students make cartoons about novels they're reading or historic events, or
  
• Create their own graphic novels (or novelettes)
  
• Make cartoons to summarize scientific ideas or research, or
  
• Demonstrate vocabulary (the 'toon needs to be an example of the word, not just used in the speech bubbles).
  
• Foreign language scenarios (it supports special characters)

Other Ideas?