In my new role as eLearning Contact and Digital Resources Coordinator I get to discover new and exciting applications that I would only marginally know in my previous involvement in ICT.

One of these is Bitstrip for Schools.

What is Bitstrips for Schools? Bitstrips is an OSAPAC licensed Resource, This means that it is free for schools.

Here are a few quick facts on Bitrstrips:

• Comics Designer Software
  
• Web Based
  
• Students don’t need to have artistic skills to use it
  
• Safe
  
• Teacher Moderated
  

  Teachers can use it to:
  

• create engaging assignments in the form of interactive comic strips
  
• create lessons and share them with other teachers within the online Bitstrips Library
  
• showcase and remix students’ creations in their own lessons
  

  Students can use it to:
  

• Create cartoon characters of themselves
  
• Can literally be “inside their own school work”
  
• Collaborate, share, and remix comic strips for group projects
  

  Here are some other reasons to start thinking about integrating BItstrips into some of your lessons:
  

  Student Engagement:
  

• Kids Love Comics
  
• Kids Connect with Cartoons & Comic Strips Naturally
  
• Educators can harness this natural attraction for learning
  

  Literacy:
  

• Comics are a proven tool for building language skills
  
• Particularly powerful for boy’s literacy
  

  ICT Experience:
  

• Critical Thinking Skills: Collecting, Organizing, Synthesizing, Filtering, Re mixing
  
• Media Literacy Skills: Visual, textual, Spatial
  
• Collaborative, Social, online Experience
  

  Instructional Strategies:
  

• Expands Teacher’s Repertoire
  
• Flexible Application: Multi Level, Multi Grade, Multi Subject
  

  Entire New Medium to deliver Curriculum
  

  Go to http://www.bitstripsforschools.com/ontario/ and check it out for yourself!!