Bitstrips for Schools Newsletter: May 2010

May 2010 Newsletter

New Feature: Import your own images!

Now the possibilities truly are endless. By popular demand, students can now add their own photos to comics, or choose from thousands of copyright-free images in the Flickr Commons!

By default, you’ll find Image Uploading enabled for your classes. If you’d like to disable it, or enable image sharing, go to the Settings tab and check (or uncheck) appropriate boxes.

To upload a photo from a hard drive or memory stick, open the Comic Builder and go to the new Images tab in the Art Library. Then click the Upload Image icon and choose the file you want to import.

Learn more about importing images

Art Update: Science props!

Take a look in the Bitstrips Art Library and you’ll find some handy new items – a whole laboratory full of scientific equipment! New stuff includes: lab desks and stools, bunsen burner, microscope, various beakers and flasks, and even the periodic table of the elements. You can find them all together in the new Science Room scene – just check out the Scenes tab in the Art Library.

Class of the Month: Shannon Powell’s Grade 7s

This month's class of the month is Shannon’s Grade 7s at Central Montcalm Middle School. Read about how Shannon uses Bitstrips with her students and what she's learned about her students.

Celebrating TWO MILLION comics!

Our first school year has included some amazing milestones, and we're thrilled to celebrate another - two million comics! A big thank you to all the teachers and students who helped catapult us there so fast.

The two millionth comic is a great account of Joseph Papineau leading a rebellion in Quebec against the British, made by Deepak in Sylvia Jakob-Muirhead's grade 7 class at Fairwind Senior Publid School. Here is an excerpt:

Read the whole comic!

The best Bitstrips comics of 2009-10

We want to cap the school year by featuring some of this year's very best student comics in next month's newsletter and on our blog. If your students have done some outstanding work that you'd like the world to see, send them our way, along with a short note about what makes it special. Just copy & paste a link to each comic and email them to shahan@bitstripsforschools.com.

See you next month!