Website review by Mieke VanderBorght, Common Sense Education | Updated October 2020
Pixton
Common Sense Selection
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Pixton

Popular comics platform puts students' focus on creation

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Learning rating
See full review
Community rating
Based on 19 reviews
Privacy rating
76%| Pass Expert evaluation by Common Sense
Grades
2–12
Subjects & Skills
Arts, English Language Arts, Communication & Collaboration, Creativity
Great for
Media Literacy, Creating Media, Assessment, Presentation
Price:  Free, Paid
Platforms:  Website
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Take a look inside

9 images
Pixton is a comic creation tool for classrooms.
There are tons of options for avatar and character creation.
Start with a blank slate, or search by keyword or hashtag category to get you started.
Access a large library of content packs that address a wide variety of school subjects.
Content packs include graphic options to help students create a themed comic plus limited background info and a brief sample comic.
Comment on student work.
After signing up, teachers access a dashboard where they can create classrooms and browse content.
General settings for the classroom allow teachers to set grade level and content area.
Manage students and their comics from the dashboard.

Pros: It's got an intuitive design with great getting-started support, as well as plenty of options for creation.

Cons: Limited potential for uploading artwork, mostly human characters, and avatar creation forces a binary gender choice.

Bottom Line: This is a platform with the potential to motivate students, getting them to share subject knowledge in a way that blends art and literacy.

How Can I Teach with This Tool?

Pixton's use of comics and the graphic arts can help build students' art skills, stretch their creative muscles, and help them think critically about sequencing, context, and story structure. For inspiration, browse through the content packs, which address subjects ranging from math to history, science, and beyond. Each pack includes a brief intro to the theme and a short sample comic. Or, just get students going with a prompt attached to your curriculum, like "Create a comic that shows one reason why Europeans came into contact with other cultures during the Middle Ages." Review students' comics and leave feedback. Use the Favorites feature to mark stellar examples to show the class. As compared to the previous versions of Pixton, this one is more bare-bones, with fewer community sharing options and teacher tools. This streamlined version focuses on creation and leaves much of the administrative work for teachers to do offline.

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Put this tool into practice:
Standards:

Pixton is a comic creation site for classrooms where teachers and students can both make and share their comic strips. A free version includes limited content. Content is available for purchase, or teachers can opt for monthly content subscriptions or all-access subscriptions. After teachers sign in, create their avatar, and establish a classroom, they enter the names of their students. Students can then access Pixton by signing in with a Google, Facebook, or Microsoft account, or teachers can generate a unique code and usernames for sign-in without such accounts. Once in, students create their own comic avatars, and then are free to begin their graphic stories panel by panel. Within each panel, users choose backgrounds and characters and write speech bubbles or thoughts. Many of these elements, like characters, then have layers of details that can be tweaked (e.g., hair and skin color, clothing, etc.).

There's a wide variety of content packs (with paid accounts) that organize and add to these options by grade level and theme. For example, the American Revolution pack includes period dress, key historical figures, and relevant backgrounds. Teachers can give students a specific assignment that uses a particular content pack -- though they'll have to do this outside the tool, as there's no internal assignments option. Or, teachers can let students create freely. Visual icons help guide students through the possibilities. Note that students don't draw their own stuff here, though. Students can search for content by keyword or use hashtags to bring up whole content packs. Students can also choose the number of panels in a comic and the layout of a page. Once students save their comic, they can generate a link to share with others and show off their work. 

Pixton has a lot going for it: simple setup for teachers, easy-to-use interface, lots of options for customizing graphics, and the ability to easily share comics. While the visual style is crisp, it can feel limited (characters start to look the same after a while). That style, though, plays into Pixton's ease of use, allowing many elements to blend together. There's an incredible abundance of options to tweak things, from facial expressions to subtle body movements. Some of these are also refreshingly inclusive, such as visual options for hearing aids or wheelchairs. 

With Pixton, students have a tool they can use to develop their literacy skills across grades and subjects. Creating comics can feel empowering, although some students might also feel overwhelmed when digging into the menus. The content pack organizational scheme provides some structure. But without a way for teachers to limit what students see, it's still relatively easy for students -- especially younger ones -- to get lost. Since there's not a lot of scaffolding, teachers will want to do that for students to mitigate these frustrations. That said, there's a clear effort to simplify Pixton much better than its predecessor, and the design and onboarding process is especially good for teachers. It's very thoughtfully laid out, clean, and lacking distractions, allowing students to focus on their comics. So even though there are some potential pitfalls, they should be easily mitigated by thoughtful teaching and lesson design. And with that work in place, Pixton can offer students a creative outlet for blending art and literacy no matter the subject matter.

Overall Rating
Engagement

For creative, artsy students, this site could transform how they view literacy and even spark more engagement in school. It's easy to use for basic projects but also includes advanced features for those looking for more.

Pedagogy

This is a useful, flexible platform for demonstrating learning, and the comic format lends itself to building students' thinking skills. Samples in each content pack show a variety of comics for building great lessons.

Support

The how-to articles, video tutorials, prompt help desk, and slick onboarding process indicate strong thinking about stress-free creation by the developers. Although, there's room for better feedback for students from teachers.

Common Sense reviewer
Mieke VanderBorght Researcher
See how we rate and review

Key Standards Supported

Writing

  • W.2.6

    With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.

  • W.3.4

    With guidance and support from adults, produce writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task and purpose. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

  • W.3.6

    With guidance and support from adults, use technology to produce and publish writing (using keyboarding skills) as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

  • W.4.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

  • W.4.6

    With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of one page in a single sitting.

  • W.5.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

  • W.5.6

    With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of two pages in a single sitting.

  • W.6.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

  • W.6.6

    Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of three pages in a single sitting.

  • W.7.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

  • W.7.6

    Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and link to and cite sources as well as to interact and collaborate with others, including linking to and citing sources.

  • W.8.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

  • W.8.6

    Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

  • W.9-10.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

  • W.9-10.6

    Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically.

  • W.11-12.4

    Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)

  • W.11-12.6

    Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information.

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Community Rating

(See all 19 reviews) (19 reviews) Write a review
Featured review by
Rachel M. , Classroom teacher
Classroom teacher
Cornell Senior High School
Coraopolis, United States
Use comics to demonstrate mastery!
I really like Pixton for a few reasons. It is a few clicks of the mouse to set up a class account, and it is very simple for the students to join our class. I also love that they technically don't need to share anything with me since I can view all of my students' works in my class account. My students were able to fly through creating comics with these. Because the interface is pretty user-friendly, they could focus most on content which is what is important to me. Students have a lot of creative ...
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Data Safety
How safe is this product?
Unclear whether this product supports interactions between trusted users and/or students.
Personal information is displayed publicly.
User-created content is not filtered for personal information before being made publicly visible.
Data Rights
What rights do I have to the data?
Users can create or upload content.
Processes to access and review user data are available.
Processes to modify inaccurate data are available.
Ads & Tracking
Are there advertisements or tracking?
Data are not shared for third-party advertising and/or marketing.
Traditional or contextual advertisements are not displayed.
Behavioral or targeted advertising is not displayed.

Continue reading about this tool's privacy practices, including data collection, sharing, and security.

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