Graphic novels an educational tool

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This article was published 04/07/2016 (3598 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rob Malo has a passion for oral history, but he said translating his work into a graphic novel—with collaboration from his team—has been the biggest step in making TiBert le voyageur an educational resource.

The writer and content developer works with artistic director Ron Lamoureux, graphic designer Christian Miranda, and artist and translator Hélène Roy, to bring to life a story of Manitoban history and culture geared towards students and teachers.

The group will be attending the Prairie Comics Festival on July 30 at the Millennium Library.
“The graphic novel works as a teaching tool, so we’ve got the artwork as a storyboard and we’ve got the option to add on the bubbles, so a teacher can add on the bubbles in French of in English, and hopefully other languages with time,” the West End resident said.

Lamoureux, creator of WhirlWind Media Group, has designed an interactive website for TiBert, where students can click through and interact with the story. An educator for over 30 years, the St. Boniface resident also helps to guide the educational content.

“I taught for over 30 years at junior high and high schools and I’ve always used illustration and graphic novels in a variety of ways, and I’m a real fan of graphic novels to begin with,” Lamoureux said. “I’ve used it as a stimulus to get people to write, to think, to talk, to discuss — I’ve always used it.

“If it’s used in an educational format, (graphic novels and multimedia) can be as effective as a well-known novel, so I think it has some real value… it can be very interactive and in my mind that’s one of the most important things. It doesn’t have to be a visual piece that’s static, it can be used so people can interact with it, develop it, create with it so it morphs into a variety of different things.”

That interactive piece is exactly what has propelled TiBert forward from Malo’s days of one-man storytelling, and while he still enjoys that aspect, the online content has made TiBert’s story more accessible to educators than ever.

“I do oral tradition mostly and I’m part of the Manitoban Storytelling Guild so I’m very much into performance,” Malo said. “Now I’ve got visual representations of my stories so to get to showcase that in person is just a beautiful thing.”

Miranda’s illustrations have been hugely important to the project as well. Although he only recently immigrated to Canada from the Philippines, Miranda has been able to capture the tone of Malo’s Manitoba-centric tales.

“(Miranda) has never been in a canoe, never been in the Manitoban wilderness, and my comic book is all about that, but he’s really been able to grasp the energy of the stories I give him,” Malo said. “I send him words and he sends me images of my province and my country that he’s new to, and I think that’s really neat.”

For more information, visit http://tibertvoyage.com/en/home/