Name of Product: Pixton

Link to Product/website: http://www.pixton.com

Description of Product: “The comic medium – the art of combining words and images – is a powerful form of visual communication, and when placed in an interactive learning environment, becomes an invaluable tool for teaching and learning.”

Debbie’s Description of Product: Pixton is a tool that enables the homeschooling educator to interest a child in creative writing.  I have found over the years that children don’t equate comics with actual literature.  I have also found that reluctant writers are easy to prompt along with pictures.  Pixton makes this easy to do.

How the Product can be used for Homeschooling: This tool is billed on the site as a pathway to literacy because it uses a medium that is readily recognizable by all ages to allow the educator to use it to fit their lesson plans.  This site is useful for learners of every age.  Preschool children can use the site to make picture stories without any dialogue. A high school student, for example, can use it to create complicated story boards with dialogue.  The possibilities are endless.

Debbie’s Experience Using the Product: We had fun once we were inside Pixton.  My children and I collaborated on a simple storyboard using the Quickie Comic section called The Restaurant.  I expected the choices for pre-made templates and characters to be limited, but they weren’t.  There are 16 storyboard templates in this section with the choice of 47 characters.  Once you chose which ones you would like, you go to a screen where you can make your story.

This tool is very user friendly with buttons on the sidebar of each comic scene.  You can add and remove characters or dialogue, change the background colors etc, etc.  Once you are finished creating your comic  and submit it, it is published to the main site.

All of the comics on this site are public, but the authors’ identities are only shown by their screen name.  Readers are given the opportunity to send feedback or become a fan.  A fan is kept apprised of any new comics their favorite contributors post to Pixton.  Once the children are proficient at using the quickie format they can move onto regular comics where they develop their comic from scratch. The large format comics could be used for making posters.

Overall we had a lot of fun with this tool and I see many possibilities for creative homeschool use.

Editor’s Note: If you like Pixton, check out this FREE tool!
Let your inner Cartoonist out with ToonDo!