Blog Post 11

In the video “Sam Pane 4th Grade Building comics," Sam talks to his students about how to become a super digital citizen, how to use the internet safely, and how to evaluate web sites. He gets the students’ attention by using a quote that they all would be familiar with from the super hero Spiderman. The quote that he uses is “with great power becomes great responsibility.” He asks the students what kind of power does the internet gives us. He then allows the students to talk amongst themselves to come up with a solution to his question. A digital citizen is a person who acts safely, respectfully and with responsibility while online. The student gives their ideas of someone not being safe, respectful, or with responsible online. One student said that trying to hack another person’s computer or give personal information while on the internet.

He uses the term super hero to get the students to think and become creative thinkers, like super heroes. He demonstrates to the students how to build their own digital super hero character. This is done on a downloaded website that has templates they can use to model. It has three basic designs that can be modified or customized however each student would like. The student is able to create their own super digital citizen. Students would have to put it into an imaginable situation to help people. An imaginable situation is very much real world and narrative based. Students are able to create this narrative between themselves and their super hero to put together to complete their story. They can use pictures to give their character a sense of ownership about them. It makes the project more meaningful.

It can be used as a way to teach dialogue, visual text bubble that pops up on screen show that they are communicating with their character. Students are able to analyze the situation that they are in by using text and analyzing the textual structure of the comic book to build a complete character. Sam all his students to take a walk around their work station to view the work that they have done, read what the other student had to say, and critique their classmates’ works. The students were very excited about sharing their work to their class audience.

The comic book project allowed students to become more creative in making their character. The purpose of the project is to let the students know that they can be exposed online and to all sources of opportunity. They need to know that they will have to make choices as super digital citizen to be safe, respectful and responsible online. What we can learn from this teacher is that the teacher should allow the student to become a part of the project by writing a narrative to develop imaginable experience events, analyze how to visual and multimedia elements contribute to text, and to encourage the students to ask and answer questions.