Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter 6 2016 | Page 10

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2016 Newsletter

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Teaching Tolerance with Comics through
eTwinning Projects
by Angeliki Kougiourouki

as pupils’ motivation, development of visual and
technological literacy, permanence of visual
stimulus, mediating role, popularity.

The purpose of this teaching proposal is to identify
the potential use of comics in teaching tolerance in
the context of collaborative educational eTwinning
projects where students are working in an
interdisciplinary manner and taking further
advantage of the use of ICT tools.

Towards the end of the 20th century distinguished
educators recommended the utilization of comics in
teaching various subjects of the curriculum
especially for pupils who were for the most part
reluctant readers. More particularly in the 21st
century, during which people must have skills to
work collaboratively with others from a variety of
linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

With the terms comics or illustrations (Maritinidis,
1990) we define the picture stories which, through
a series of closely connected sketches and
accompanying dialogues, render more vividly action
stories (Platis, 1978).
Their role and value in education was the object of
study by many educators who pointed out their
particularly raised popularity among the younger
ages. At the same time, the keen response on the
part of young people and the particularities of the
comics culture turned the interest of sociologists
towards the study of ideological trends, of
stereotypes, of the roles of heroes but also of the
social parameters which are reflected in them
(Theodoridis & Chalkia, 2005).
The utilization of elements of the youth culture
within a pedagogical process is not something new
as it dates back to the 40s (Hutchinson, 1949;
Sones, 1944). Acco rding to Burton (1955)
illustration in the form of comics is a universally
comprehended language which stimulates the
senses, transforms the abstract to concrete and
suggests an atmosphere of adventure, suspense
and often mystery, thus exciting the readers’
imagination.
Employing comics in education is an idea supported
by the theory of double codification of Paivio,
according to which the codification of information is
done in double way and learning is more effective
when the text is accompanied by image (Paivio,
1991).

In the present reality in education, however,
modern trends call for exploiting the possibilities
that are offered by the multimedia and hypermedia
and more generally the ICT in connection to the
redefinition of the educational aims in the society of
learning, that is, the encouragement of active
learning, the prompting to cooperate, the linking of
school to daily life, the emphasis on developing
critical thinking, self-regulation and reflection and
finally the best use of the individual abilities of each
student (Vosniadou, 2006). From this respect, the
contribution of ICT is considered equally important
especially that of the web 2.0 tools-also in the
teaching of cultural diversity and tolerance, as a
scientific and pedagogical constitution of the tutors
and also as “tools” for learning inside the school
classroom and within the framework of school
activities. With the incorporation of ICT in education
we can observe an increasing interest in the
pedagogical use of the Global Web aimed at
realizing group of team activities that support the
collaborative learning. Series of new internet
services, which are closely connected to
collaborative learning, allow users to cooperate and
exchange data online in a more efficient way. Thus,
users can focus more on the process of learning
rather than on technology itself (Booth, 2007).

The utilization of comics in the teaching process can
offer considerable advantages (Yang, 2003), such

The relevant bibliography (Schulz-Zander, Büchter
& Dalmer, 2002) supports that e-collaborative

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