Comics in the Classroom

Jacob Blackstock is a cartoonist and animator who created Bitstrips for Schools, an online tool that makes it easy for kids to create their own web comics. He explains how his own obsession with comics led to an inadvertent breakthrough: by encouraging kids to produce their own comic strips, teachers are not only fostering creativity and encouraging literacy skills, but engaging students more deeply with content because they are actively collaborating with their peers.

 

Jacob Blackstock is a cartoonist/animator/entrepreneur and the founder of Core Matrix, a creative thinktank/media lab dedicated to the development of new forms of entertainment – such as Bitstrips, a popular online tool for creating original comics and cartoon characters. Since launching in 2008, Bitstrips.com has become the world’s biggest online comic-making community, with over 6 million comics created so far and more than 25,000 new strips every day. And now Bitstrips is revolutionizing literacy education with ‘Bitstrips for Schools’, which has been licensed for over 2 million students. He spends his days as Bitstrips Inc’s CEO, creative director and lead designer, while developing new projects for Core Matrix at night.