TCNJ News

For Immediate Release
November 8, 2006

The Comic Book Project Comes to TCNJ

 

EWING, NJ … The Comic Book Project, an arts-based literacy and learning initiative hosted by Columbia University’s Teachers College, is scheduled to hold a workshop for educators and after-school staff at The College of New Jersey on Friday, November 10, from 10am-12pm.

The College is teaming up with Middlesex County College to bring the Comic Book Project to the local area. 

It’s “an innovative way for students to develop their literacy and art skills—and for us to find their voice,” said Pat Donohue, director of community engaged learning at the Bonner Center .

In 2001, as a senior researcher at Columbia’s Center for Arts Education Research, Dr. Michael Bitz, Ed. D. founded the project as a way to utilize his research conclusions—that learning through the arts has academic and social value for children—in a creative manner.  Creating comics, Bitz discovered, combined basic academic skills like reading, writing, brainstorming and conceptualizing ideas with students’ personal experiences and interests.

Bitz eventually partnered with Dark Horse Comics, the largest publisher of creator-owned comic books, and during the 2004-2005 school year, the project was launched nationally.  The comics were published and featured in a national touring exhibit.                                                                                                                                                           

"There is no field where research is so far removed from practice than in education," Bitz told The Washington Post in 2004.  "I really wanted to try to take that knowledge [gained from research] and turn it into something that schools could really use as a way of bringing creativity back into children's lives and into the learning process."

For more information, please visit http://www.comicbookproject.org.

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