Please press on the picture for a bigger view.As soon as I read about it on Alex G Francisco's fab Zarco English Tool of the Day blog, I simply couldn't resist trying out StripGenerator. Alex has some great ideas for how to exploit this nifty little comicstrip tool. After a few trial attempts as "Anonymous", I decided to sign up, so that I could keep my strips in one place. I tried to embed the strip I created into my blog by using the embed code given, but unfortunately the picture came out far too big for the page and it didn't look good. So, it is now 1.15 am and I have been "tinkering" with the image on Adobe Photoshop to try to get the picture as a jpg. My efforts have paid off and I am now much happier with the result! I am sure there must be a simpler way to resize the html code from the original site source, but that is beyond me! I had fun creating the strip above, and I'm sure my students would enjoy it as well.
I am beginning to prepare for my TESOL-Italy presentation in November on the theme of "Language Flows" and the comic strip generator is an excellent example of a tool that students can use to review and recycle new words that have entered the Oxford Dictionary of English. There is an article from the Daily Telegraph here. You can find out more about the meaning of "boomerang generation" from the excellent 6 Minute BBC Learning English site here.
You can find out about some more new words that have entered the dictionary by clicking here.
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2 comments:
Dear Janet,
Loved your idea and I'll be sure to try it out with my students. :) Maybe we can also create a picture dictionary for all the new words they learn.
Your strip turned out very well. Adobe really did the trick. I fiddled a bit with the HTML code too, but like you couldn't figure out what part needed to be changed. Although I am betting on the part that says "full.PNG".
To get around the strip's size I just took a screenshot with Fireshot, a really cool Firefox add-on that allows you to capture the whole page and not just what you can see on the screen. After that I just saved it and it was ready to be used elsewhere as a simple picture. As you can see different tools, same outcome! Isn't tech fab? ;)
Dear Alex
Many thanks for your kind words! It's all due to your fab "Tool of the Day" blog that I find out about these new tools. I always read it in Portuguese just to see if I can get the gist and usually I do, but yesterday I tried the English translator and it worked a treat!
Like you, I reckoned it was to do with the "full png" so I changed the HTML code to "medium.PNG". It didn't do the trick, so that's when I went round the houses, doing a screenshot etc. It all came good in the end, but there has to be a simpler way to embed it to a normal size. Maybe someone could advise re this?
Your idea of creating a picture dictionary for all the new words is a great idea, and I'll make sure I will remember to mention this in future teacher training sessions.
Yes, I agree, tech is fab, but it's tricky sometimes!
I certainly burned the midnight oil last night trying to sort it out. I'm so glad I persevered.
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