Hazel Orr and winner of the Online Cartoon competition, Year 7 student Kyle, from Rochedale South State School

Students who enjoy expressing themselves through art and graphics have had an opportunity to showcase their skills through an online cartooning competition.

"This event was organised to provide an online learning opportunity for those students who prefer to express themselves graphically," said Hazel Orr, Learning Place Mentor, Sunshine Coast South. "You know – the ones who often don't have much to say, but cover their schoolwork with doodles!"

Ms Orr had noted that many online projects relied largely on writing for communication. She wondered if the Learning Place could be used to create opportunities for students who struggled with text, but were adept at art and graphics.

Ms Orr had been introduced to comic chat at a Learning Place Mentors conference. "I thought drawing cartoons was something students of widely varying age groups could enjoy," she said. "For a competition, I used our mentors' mascot Ernie E. Mu and challenged students to create a cartoon avatar for him."

The Learning Place set up a competition project room with a blog, where students posted their creations. An appropriate prize was offered: an online workshop with cartoonist Gary Clark, creator of the Swamp comic strip.

Gary Clark, creator of the Swamp comic strip ran the online workshop

Soon, sets of very original and extremely different looking emus were appearing on the competition blog. The winning design was submitted by Year 7 student Kyle, from Rochedale South State School.

"Kyle's usually a rather quiet person," said Neil Randall, Deputy Principal, Rochedale South State School. "But when he heard he'd won he was the most animated I have ever seen him. The beaming smile and the triumphant 'Yes!' were quite out of character, and the smile has yet to fade."

Kyle and a group of his friends enjoyed an online cartooning workshop with Gary Clark, each viewing the others' screens via data conferencing.

"Gary modelled drawing – having to come to grips with the art of drawing with a mouse! – and the students responded," Ms Orr said. "The data conferencing allowed every participant immediate access to view each others' work, and captured their drawings for future use."

Mr Randall (who was also introduced to comic chat as a Learning Place Mentor) said that Rochedale South State School was using Kyle's success as an impetus to establish a range of student driven projects. "It's created an interest and momentum in the school," he said. "We plan to start with cartooning as a motivation to engage reluctant writers, particularly boys. A student IT club is also being established and the first project will be to use the graphics skills developed to create an animated school mascot to feature on our website."

Plans are being made for a similar cartooning competition in 2007.

Curriculum Exchange TIPS

  TIPS are Teaching Ideas, Practices and Strategies which are contributed by Queensland teachers. Read the TIPS on Online Cartooning Competition 2006.