Hume on the help desk? Picture is (c) Existential Comics

What would it be like if your tech support employed philosophers to help people out? This comic strip from Existential Comics provides an answer.

What I like about the site, apart from the fact that the strips I've looked at so far have brought a smile to my face, is that there is an option to have the joke explained to you. At the end of each strip there is a list of the philosophers featured in it, and also this button:

When you click on that you see a box like this:

I think this is a great way to teach philosophy. When I was a teacher, I used cartoons and comic strips to teach (at various times) Computing, Economics, English, ICT, Politics and Sociology. However, unlike the Existential Comics website, I didn't provide the explanation of the joke -- I asked my students to do that.

If you would like to create your own comic strips, see the article 25 useful resources for teachers, as it contains a link to 20 websites where you can create your own cartoons and comics for free.

If you're interested in a philosophical perspective of Computing, see the guest article by Mel Thompson, Should philosophy influence educational policy?

Incidentally, both of those articles first appeared in the Digital Education newsletter, which is free. You can subscribe to it by clicking on the button below. Thank you.