One of the greatest challenges of teaching today is bridging the gap between what students choose to do at home on their own leisure time and what we ask them to do at school. In order to increase student motivation and interest, teachers should be including more online and web-based technologies as vehicles for learning and assessment. Comic strips represent a high-interest medium for many students (especially boys) and their potential as a learning tool is utilized on the Bitstrips Website.
Free for Teacher and Student Use in Ontario
Bitstrips (or Bitstripsforschools.com) is a website that has been licensed to all publicly funded schools in Ontario. If your school is not in Ontario (or publicly funded) you can still access a free 30-day trial. Security features like password protection allow students to protect their creations and save their progress if needed.
Teachers can design activities or use the bank of previously created ideas to assign to their class. When students finish a piece of work, they submit it to their teacher for evaluation. One of the greatest features of using this resource is that students (and teachers) have access to their accounts and work with any internet connection. They do not need to be at school in order to gain entry to their account and activities.
Bitstrips Build Student Relationships and Improve Class Dynamics
Using software like Bitstrips can help to cultivate a sense of cohesiveness in your classroom. Students will feel that they are part of a positive group when they are creating their avatar characters and manipulating them to get a laugh out of their friends (and probably you too!). These avatar designs serve as an interesting introductory activity, and then throughout your use of Bitstrips, students can continue to make adjustments and alterations to their characters. Don't forget to "avatar" yourself as well. Students will enjoy watching your avatar grow and change. They may even choose to include your teacher avatar in a comic strip that they create.
Lesson Ideas for Teachers
One of the methods that I have used to incorporate Bitstrips into my classroom practice is creating storyboards. As a student, storyboards provide a visual plan when creating a video or a pictorial representation of a summary. After watching a movie in your class, you can even have your students hand draw a storyboard of the movie's major plot events (a summary) and then turn that storyboard into a comic strip using Bitstrips.
The "Family Portrait" activity is a great opening assignment that will allow students to "cartoon" their families (even pets!). The "Book Cover" assignment provides an easy connection to a class novel you are reading with them. It could also allow them to showcase their favourite book – which will help you to build a class profile of their reading habits.
Engage Students with Bitstrips – an Online Comic Resource
Overall, comics are a great way to cover language expectations and raise student interest in your lesson activities. Most of our students will excel at the opportunity to show off their online skills and demonstrate key literacy outcomes through the use of online assignments.
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