August 2011

Welcome to the Education Newsletter!

This is the first, ever, plasq newsletter designed just for the education world. Over the years we have had enormous support from educators around the world, and we thought it was high time to give you a space all of your own! So welcome!

In This Issue:

• ISTE 2011
• Comic Life for iPad now available!
• Comic Life Blog
• Educator Profile: Steve Silvasy
• Call for submissions

ISTE 2011

plasq hit the road and headed to ISTE 2011 in Philadelphia and we just want to say a huge THANK YOU for all of the support we had from everyone who stopped by the booth to see us.

To the presenters of those sessions we want to you know that we really appreciate the fact that you find Comic Life so useful and usable that you're inspired to share your knowhow with your fellow educators. If you're presenting on Comic Life in future conferences please let us know if there's anything we can do to make your sessions even more effective.

We would like to congratulate our iPad and Comic Life Raffle Winners! Each winner received a brand new iPad 2, free Comic Life licenses, and a gift certificate to the iTunes App Store!

• Grand Prize Winner: Glenn Lee of Waialua High School, Hawaii
• Monday 1st Prize Winner: Jamie Meyers of Kenai Peninsula Borough SD, Alaska
• Tuesday 1st Prize Winner: Cindy Luke of Trantwood Elementary School, Virginia

We would like to thank everyone who took the time to stop by and enter the raffle. We hope to see you again at next year's ISTE in San Diego!

Comic Life for iPad!

Comic Life for iPad has started making its way into classrooms around the world and has had an enthusiastic response from Apple Distinguished Educators! The ease and functionality of Comic Life has been brought over to the cutting edge iPad, making it perfect for this mobile device in your classroom. 

You and your students will quickly be able to jump into working with Comic Life for the iPad using built in templates and a familiar user interface.

See what people are saying about Comic Life for iPad:

"Sets the standard for iPad developers: fun, easy to use and hugely impressive." — MacUser UK May 2011 Issue

"Comic Life is just one of those great little applications that is almost perfect for any classroom." — Digmo.co.uk

"Comic Life leaps onto the iPad in a single bound." — Macworld Review

And if you're trying to convince your students you can just tell them, "Comic Life for iPad is Awesomeness you can Touch." — Geekpropaganda

If you are evaluating apps for use in your schools and interested in trying out Comic Life for iPad please write in to request coupons. We have a limited number available, but we would love for you to be able to try Comic Life for iPad in your schools today! For those educators out there who have been using Comic Life for iPad we would love to hear how it's going and what we can do to improve it.

Comic Life Blog

We've started a blog to give Comic Life users a place to share and learn, and check out new happenings with Comic Life. We want you to feel free to comment and write in, ask questions, submit blog topics. We want to put things here that you want to see, so let us know what you're looking for! If it has anything to do with Comic Life it's fair game — from published comics to the technical specifics of feature use. Check it out HERE!

There are plenty of examples to get you started if you're new to Comic Life, and we're always interested in seeing more. Those of you who have been using Comic Life for a while, we'd love to see what you've been up to!

Teacher Profile: Steve Silvasy, Arise Academy Charter High School

As part of our inaugural content on our new Comic Life blog we would like to introduce to you Steve Silvasy, our first educator profiled!

You might not expect to see a native Philadelphia street artist teaching literacy in a high school technology class, but Steve Silvasy has found a way to bring art, technology and literacy together with his students in Comic Life. Comics used to be the symbol of wayward youth and the bane of educational literature's existence. Now comics are breaking their way into classrooms as teachers move to engage their students in new and creative ways.

As a youth who enjoyed video games and fantasy role playing, Steve found the idea of an alter ego liberating. Today Steve applies that pursuit of creative outlets to his class, saying that "using an application that brings out creativity from students and also works on building literacy is very important in teaching." And Comic Life turned out to be just the app he was looking for. Read more on our blog.

Let Us Show Off Your Work

We will always be on the look out for new material to post on our blog and suggestions for how to better use Comic Life in the classroom. Please feel free to share your project and assignment ideas with us and fellow educators. Please send it to us at edu@plasq.com.

Pass it along

Please feel free to share this newsletter with your colleagues. They can sign up to receive their plasq Education Newsletter by going HERE.

Bye for now...