The 6-panel cartoon below represents the first attempt to design something interesting around the idea of Jim Crow laws using the available tools of the site. The cartoon is based on the article our group read about a pair of girls who did something similar with digital storytelling. I thought the girls had picked up on an interesting idea of Jim Crow being an actual person, which in legal ideas might not be too far off. The idea of searching for ‘him’ in all the separate but not equal places, telling it within six panels and giving it some kind of conclusion meant that we had to boil the ideas down to their very essence. I think this idea of presenting “just the facts” is exactly what a cartoon can do well, what a cartoon has always done well, which is boil things down to just the essence. The cartoon follows Libby Truth as she searches for the elusive Senator Crow. Sometimes art is truly serendipity as in the second panel where I had not learned yet how to flip the character but his back to the character of Libby seems to fit the Senator Pale’s avoidance of the question. The problem of fitting the words to the thought-bubble were never overcome and took a few tries to get the words and the bubbles to coincide. I can foresee the application of this idea to engage students maybe at the midway point of learning a particular topic. Something to reinforce the concepts and maintain interest.
CitizenTeacherPlanner Education&Technology 