Operation A: Bitstrips

In order for us to succeed in our efforts, presentation tools are critical to our success moving forward. Our research efforts start with Bitstripsforschools.com (2012). This interactive web-site provides an engaging educational software that uses comics as a way to help students learn different types of materials.  Both students and teachers can create and edit avatars (virtual representation of something), and then put those avatars in comics and specific scenarios. Going through these different scenarios helps students learn many things such as social skills, reading & writing, critical thinking, emotion recognition, and internet safety. The first thing to do when signing up is create an avatar, allowing the user to create different characters. Users can create anybody: friends, family, famous people, or even imaginary people. It is completely up to the person creating them. Once you have created the avatar and characters, then the user can create the bitstrip (comic). This is a great way to capture the attention of students, and shortens the time used to create lesson plans. As long as it is used wisely, it can be a great tool for the classroom. It is a paid service, but anybody can get a free 30-day trial to see if it would work for them. This will surely come in handy for the Walkamolian cause.