<< Back
		Posted October 2004 Comic Chat a hit at Windaroo Valley State High School By Lyndall Owbridge
		With 27 Year 8 Visual Arts students in the chat room at once, I wondered if anyone was able to follow the ‘conversation’ about their favourite celebrities. Not to worry - they were too busy enjoying their own avatar designs and accompanying words appear in comic strip form in the wonderful Comic Chat room. This collaborative Visual Art display was a huge success as each student became engaged in getting his or her avatars finished in time to participate. Those that were a bit slow getting started soon got busy once they saw their peers enjoying the chat room. Backtracking a little – A week prior to being booked into a computer room for three weeks, the students designed their avatar designs using pencils and felt pens. Download the worksheet 8k.

Then, using Macromedia Fireworks, they soon had their 'Neutral' expression avatar drawn, using a transparent background and canvas of 100 X 110pixels at 72dpi. Taking extra care with this first one, they saved ‘neutral’ as a ‘png’ file and also exported it as a ‘gif’. The neutral.png was then adapted to become each other expression in turn, exporting each one as a ‘gif’.

Uploading was relatively painless, with teachers just having to ‘approve’ each set as it was published. (Had I been more organized, I could also have assessed their work at this point).

We looked at the potential dangers of open chat rooms and spent a short time playing the Safety in Chat Rooms game. With their safety in mind, the slight inconvenience of usernames and passwords becomes understandable and even welcome.

Once published and approved, their own design became available and they just loved it – even the most disengaged students ended up in the chat room and for a while, the classroom was quiet! They were all busy writing expressively trying out their different emotions (Comic Chat automatically chooses the appropriate avatar for the writing if it is sufficiently expressive).

They were quite proud of their little characters, “My guy is cooler than yours”, was often seen, and they excitedly printed out a page of chat for their bookwork.

The poll: Is Comic Chat fun?

Overwhelmingly the vote was Yeah! (For teacher too.)