Lesson #8 Netiquette and Educational Comic Strips.

In this lesson we learned about the concept of Netiquette. It is the short term for "Internet etiquette”. Netiquette is a code of good behavior on the Internet for emailing, social media, online chats (Instant Messenger Services), forums, website or news site comments, etc. There are two fundamental milestones in the history of style rules:

• The RFC 1855 document (Request for Comments 1855) of 1995. This document was the first reference regarding rules of etiquette for the Internet. 

• NETiquette, by Virginia Shea 1994. In 1994, Virginia Shea published this work, which has become one of the Internet classics.

Core Rules of Netiquette as written by Virginia Shea can be read below. They have later been adapted to 21st century Internet use but their main principles remains valid:

• Rule 1: Remember the human
• Rule 2: Adhere to the same standards of behavior online...
• Rule 3: Know where you are in cyberspace
• Rule 4: Respect other people's time and bandwidth
• Rule 5: Make yourself look good online 
• Rule 6: Share expert knowledge
• Rule 7: Help keep flame wars under control
• Rule 8: Respect other people's privacy
• Rule 9: Don't abuse your power
• Rule 10: Be forgiving of other people's mistake

This lesson's practical work was aimed at creating an educational comic strip that can relate to the Netiquette. I have focused primarily on our group topic "jobs and professions" bearing in mind that at the end the character decides to go on T.V to share expert knowledge after she has found an interesting object with archeological value on a field trip, attending to Netiquette Rule 6.

 

This is the outcome:

 

The software used to do the comic strip on this occasion is Pixton. I used the version for Educators. A subscription is required to be able to use a wide range of features that allow us to have full acces to the image bank and to use important tools. Basic features are limited so one must use their imagination to adapt the scarce preexisting images to a story that we may have thought out beforehand.

 

Here is a list of other websites and software to make comic strips and cartoons online for ESL.

Benefits of comic strip creation as a tool in education are varied. It is interesting to keep it focused so these rules may be useful:

• To create your own comic for teaching choose a concept or a topic

• Focus on one main concept.  

• Open with a hook that may catch the attention of the students. 

• Create the timeline of the story by working backwards from the end to the start, this is a great point not to distract the listener from the main storyline. 

• Make your main character likeable and relatable for your students, they may feel they are not perfect but have strengths and weaknesses like everyone else

 

So, it's time to try different softwares and get an idea of pros and cons of each of them. Comic strip making online can be a good assessment tool for teachers and an attractive activity for students that links language learning to the development of ICT skills.