Bitstrips for Schools

When you visit your Class Gallery page, you’ll notice an amazing new feature – the option to share class comics with everyone! Now parents, colleagues and your whole community can read all of the inventive comics your students are making.

How to share your gallery
If you haven’t previously shared your gallery, you’ll find a blue box with instructions on the Class Gallery page -
Click the Preview public gallery link to see how your gallery will appear to others. To make it public, click the Enable public class gallery button.

Next you’ll see a link that you can share. Visitors to this link will only be able to see comics that you’ve posted on your gallery – the rest of your classroom stays private, as always.

And finally, here’s what a public gallery looks like -

Clicking any comic preview box opens a viewer where visitors can easily read all of your class comics in sequence!

You can turn public galleries on and off anytime from your Class Settings page – just check or un-check the Enable public class gallery box under Class Permissions.

Over 30,000 comics are made on Bitstrips for Schools each day – let the avalanche of shared comics begin!

In observance of Black History Month, we’ve added a bunch of new activities that give students a range of ways to demonstrate what they’ve learned in class – from explaining the importance of studying black history to creating a comic interview with a famous historical figure.

After just one week, these activities have been used in over 500 classrooms across Canada and the US! You can check them out and assign them to your students here.

We’ve recently added a fun and practical new activity to our library, challenging students to show how we can all conserve energy around the home. Created jointly with Guelph Hydro, this activity gives kids a creative way to talk about a very relevant topic.

While this activity is available to everyone, Guelph Hydro is adding a competitive twist just for Grade 5 classes across the Upper Grand and Wellington Catholic school boards in Ontario: on March 31st, they’ll pick their favorite energy conservation comics submitted by students in those boards, and give 2 lucky classrooms an iPad loaded with energy conservation-themed apps. These comics will also be available in downloadable book form!

You can check out and assign the activity here.

We’re proud to announce that the Digi Awards (formerly known as the Canada New Media Awards) has named Bitstrips for Schools Best in E-Learning!

We’re excited and honoured to have received this prestigious award, and want to thank all the teachers and students out there for helping to make the site what it is!

You might have noticed the many new additions we’ve made to the Art Library in the last couple of months – tons of clothes, props & furniture – plus a convenient way of finding it all through the new Search bar.

And now we’ve added a whole range of new household scenes, including bedrooms, backyard (with a chlorinated swimming pool and hot tub!), front yard, kitchen, bathroom, computer room and even a laundry room – 17 new scenes in all.

When you’re playing with the new props, try double-clicking on them to see all their different positions. Most can appear multiple ways – for example, the dishwasher can be open or closed, full or empty!

We’ve also made a subtle but amazing change to how many of the props work. Some of them now have multiple layers, which means that objects can now appear within other objects, instead of simply on top of or behind them. Use the Layering buttons at the bottom of the Comic Builder to try it our for yourself.

Enjoy the new stuff, and look forward to even more coming soon!