The Use of Comics as a Teaching and Learning Tool

Nowadays, there is great interest in using comics for teaching and learning. Comics are used by many educators for face-to-face or online teaching. They are important educational tools, and students develop visual literacy skills. Students enjoy creating comics because they freely express themselves, use realistic expressions, and make emotional stories. This study aims to discuss the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to design comics for children in kindergarten for learning statistics. A group of undergraduate students, in the Department of Early Childhood Education at the University of Ioannina Greece, developed comics for teaching basic concepts of statistics to children in kindergarten. Students were free to create a comic to teach children the notions of mean, median, and mode. The most popular free online ICT tools used by undergraduate students for creating comics were: “Storyboard That,” “Pixton,” “MakeBeliefsComix,” and “Scratch.” Students used the microlearning approach to present their comics in the classroom. The main advantage of the application of comics in the teaching process is that they can present basic statistical concepts, with a very challenging and humorous approach using visual arts.