Educational Gaming Commons

I just read an interesting Edutopia article about comic books in education. I've been curious about this for years - a prof. at PSU into Manga gave a talk pre 2K that sparked my interest.

More recently I puchased Comic Life Deluxe for the Mac - a comic book layout program in essence. Using it, you can develop your own comics. You still have to create your own artwork, but all else (frames, text bubbles, etc.) is just a click away.

Second Life and other virtual environments are one way to obtain your artwork. Fantastic scenes abound, and characters, outfits, poses, etc. are cheap and easy. The Global Kids Project did just this to great effect.

Sound great, but what's missing here? Web 2 integrated into the process. Imagine a program that combined Comic Book Deluxe with a Google Doc-like interface. Students could come together in a participatory creative endeavour, using a medium that speaks to them to build great things. How cool would it be to work with others across the world to create an artistic story that teaches?

I'm keeping my fingers crossed here!