Superhero Comic Book Maker
Leap tall buildings with creative audio and visual storytelling
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Superhero Comic Book Maker
Pros: Superhero characters are diverse, creative, strong, and smart.
Cons: Kids can't change images while recording the story, which may limit natural twists and turns in creativity.
Bottom Line: Kids create comic book-style stories and color pages on this easy app.
In the classroom, Superhero Comic Book Maker can help kids practice storytelling and learn how to make digital creations. For reluctant writers, it can serve as a friendly, approachable way for students to practice creative storytelling without the need to write. Words on usable on-screen stickers like "Pow!" and "Wham!" help kids learn how onomatopoeia words are used for impact in storytelling.
Teachers may need to be very involved with helping kids learn how to use the creative tools on the storybook portion of this app. Otherwise, it may be best reserved for kids who are already very comfortable navigating creativity apps without verbal instruction. Trying to discern what all the tools do based on icon clues may be frustrating for some younger kids on multi-step activities such as storybook making. How simple or complex this digital creative play process gets is up to kids and teachers.
Superhero Comic Book Maker is a storytelling and coloring page app for preschool through first grade students. Using the option icons, kids choose different background scenes (including their own photos), superheroes, and monsters. Then they can record the audio to go along with the pictures to make a story, moving the characters as they talk. Superhero Comic Book Maker comes from the makers of Princess Fairy Tale Maker, which is very similar to this app, but with princess and fairy themes.
In this app, sticker choices include superhero boys and girls, and superheroes from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Girl superheroes tend to be portrayed as the "smart ones" -- one says "e=mc2" and the other says "this is a job for code girl" -- whereas the males tend to be portrayed as strong. Unfortunately, currently all the coloring pages feature boy or animal superheroes only. Overall, this is fun, semi-directed play for young storytellers.
The introductory monster vs. superhero video for kids to watch in Superhero Comic Book Maker may help get kids' story idea wheels turning. Then kids can use their own creative vision to choose a background and characters, add their own art, and use their imaginations to verbally record a story. Kids can even take pictures of their own to use as the background for their stories. While the verbal instructions on this app are minimal, the visual icons that kids tap to choose features do highlight options well. Still, this can be a problem for some younger users, making this app little more than a coloring book for them unless teachers assist during first-time use. Once kids understand how to use the multitude of creative tools in Superhero Comic Book Maker, their creative superpowers will come to life.
Learning Rating
Community Rating
Fun digital storytelling tool for open-ended creativity K - 3, but academic potential for older students may be limited
Pros: The explicit instructions are spoken every time, so very young learners can use this app independently. Students can record their voice while moving the stickers to create a multimedia comic strip. You can add backgrounds from your camera roll and save comic strips you make to your camera roll which gives you a lot of options for app smashing (combining 2 or more programs into one multimedia project.) Within the app, you can create different comic strips and drop them on top of each other in order to put the scenes together into one comic strip.
Cons: It is geared toward a very young audience, and while it could have some value as a digital storytelling tool for older students as well, I would be hesitant to purchase this app on multiple devices because of the limited audience for which it is intended. It is also fairly limited in it's character options. There aren't many girls, and the option to mix and match characters would be nice.
Bottom line: While I'm glad that I have access to this app on one iPad, I would not recommend purchasing it for multiple iPads in a school in which iPads are shared across grade levels.
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