Comics and Exams

The last few hours before an examination are intense for both kids and their parents. While parents are busy making sure their kids have revised every bit of their study material, kids are plain bored with the excessive cramming that is happening. They would like to do nothing better than pick up their favourite comic and unwind.

This gets me to think what a great tool the comic book would make at the time of exams. With just a little effort, comic books can be designed innovatively such that they become one of the ways to prepare for exams. The creative content in comic books is said to have better recall value than the conventional text books. Kids are sure to remember chronology, time-lines, name of places, historical characters when presented in the form of graphic books.

Think of young children discussing Science, Geography and maybe even History with the same interest as Superman and Batman, quizzing one another using their Iken Books and acing tests just like that!

Not only can this revolutionize learning methods, but also the process of revision. The otherwise boring question banks that kids usually skip in their text books can be replaced by fun games and tests. Even the last minute revisions seem less stressing.

While recognizing the need to innovate learning, Mexus Education has turned to comic book resources, Iken Books and other comic text books to teach children. A welcome change for teachers, parents and definitely for the students.

From time immemorial, the image of a child hiding his comic inside his text book speaks of his disinterest in studies. But today, the winds of change have come; urging us to open our minds to newer methods of preparing for exams. Kids need no longer hide those comic books for the day has come when parents will be happy to see their kid with comic book in his hand. And as for the kids, they’ve always enjoyed it!

Comic Books that Educate

Myth? Unbelievable? Impossible? Of course not. One of the most recent trends that has brought education and entertainment together is the emergence of the educational comic book.

It all began way back in 1949 when Hutchinson’s experimented with a weekly comic called Puck, which was centred about a school curriculum. At the time, most teachers found that the comics had increased motivation and participation levels among students. However, there was also the conservative lot who actually kvetched about educational comic books oversimplifying learning. Since then, the educational comic book has metamorphosed through various avatars including Superman language arts workbooks and many others to gradually gain grudging acceptance in educational circles.

Truth be told, most people, particularly children, think in images and this is why they are drawn to comics, educational or not. With regard to education, comic books can be particularly useful because they help ease the cognitive burden plain text places on a learner. While students may spend many minutes reading a few paragraphs on the water cycle, a simple graphical representation of the same phenomenon explains the process in seconds. Such is the power of the medium.

Unlike other visual mediums like movies and animation, comic books provide a sense of visual permanence. Simply put, this means that specific images are always easily available to the learner allowing the learning to be self-paced.

The most important aspect of educational comic books is that they have the potential to make learning pleasurable in stark contrast to the boring textbooks that most children have to put up with. As a result, studying becomes less of a burden.

While guides, question sets and poorly compiled study notes have become a booming industry to boost examination results, educational comic books pose parents and students with a qualitatively better option.

Will educational comic books take off? That’s anybody’s guess right now!