That’s right! Today is Blog Day! Blogging is a great way to involve your students in documenting their learning, giving them a broader authentic audience to communicate to, and inviting participation from families.

Here are some great tips on starting a class blog from Edublogger.

I’ve seen some great class blogs that involve BrainPOP, like this one by Dave Kootman:

Kootman’s Class.com

To help you get up and running, BrainPOP’s got a topic on Blogging. Off you go!

How’s it going? Got some ideas to share for incorporating BrainPOP into class blogs? Blogging about BrainPOP? Please let us know by posting comments!

Create a Word Wall in your classroom using the vocabulary in BrainPOP Jr.! First, find some index cards or sentence strips and copy the words from the Word Wall section of your favorite BrainPOP Jr. unit onto the cards. Then, post them to a bulletin board or pocket-chart. As you and your class watch the movie and engage in the supplemental activities available, encourage students to add any additional new or unfamiliar words to the wall. You can also print the Word Wall words for each topic, which lends itself to more active participation before (previewing new vocabulary), during (note-taking, sketching), and after (review) the movies. At the end of the study, assess students by playing the Concentration game where students must match the vocabulary word with its definition. It’s a great way to motivate students and teach them new vocabulary.

Tell us how you use the Word Wall feature in your classroom by posting your comments below!

We had a great recommendation from a teacher that I wanted to share. She uses our See All, print-friendly lists of topics for BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. to easily integrate BrainPOP topics into the curriculum she’s already teaching. She prints the lists and keeps them in her planning notebook, so whether she’s at home or planning with her grade level team, she can quickly see what’s available.

I also wanted to share the idea of taking your scope & sequence for each subject area and aligning BrainPOP topics with each standard. You can easily add a “BrainPOP Topic” column into the existing document.

Any other tips to help educators get up and running for back to school time? Please share by posting comments below!

Hi everybody! This is Tim here. I just got back from my summer vacation, and I wanted to share some of the cool things Moby and I saw and learned during our travels around the United States with my family. My mom said it was going to be a long trip, so I brought plenty of books and games to keep from getting bored. If you saw my Twitter posts, you know that I also brought my cell phone : ) Little did I know that taking pictures, meeting new people, and learning about different places would keep me so busy!

Our first stopover was Akron, Ohio, nicknamed the Rubber Capital of the World. If you know me you know that I love baseball, and the Akron Aeros game was the first of four that we saw during the trip. We also met a kid my age who had won a huge trophy during the soapbox derby championships, which are an Akron tradition.

We next drove through Chicago and stopped to see a really beautiful Baha’i temple in Wilmette, Illinois. That night, we stayed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Their funky-looking art museum, which was designed by a famous architect, was closed the next day, but we saw the Harley Davidson museum instead, which was pretty awesome. In one display you could see all the parts of a motorcycle, as if it had magically exploded into itty bitty pieces!

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On August 17, 2009 I had the privilege to meet the extraordinary staff of Harlandale ISD in San Antonio, Texas.

Many of the teachers that I spoke with loved that students could email their quiz results to the teacher. Some secondary teachers even set up an individual folder for each student to keep track of their BrainPOP quizzes. What a great way to ease report card time! All the students need to do is choose the Graded Quiz option and then type in the teacher’s email address at the end. Did you also know that you can now take the quizzes full-screen? Just click on the icon with the arrows in the top right corner of the movie screen. To return to normal view, just hit the Esc key. For those of you who have interactive whiteboards, the quizzes also work great with learner response systems.

Please spread the word to your colleagues and tell us about your creative ideas for using BrainPOP quizzes with students by sharing your comments below!

In case you missed yesterday’s free webinar, Implementing BrainPOP Into Your School or District, have no fear! You can access it on our Webinars page any time, as well as other topics to help you make the most of BrainPOP. Please spread the word to your colleagues!

How do you plan to implement BrainPOP? Share ideas and tips by posting comments below!

What do BrainPOP and netTrekker have in common? 1). They both celebrated their 10^th birthdays this summer. 2). They’re powerful 21^st century teaching tools. 3). They have partnered together so you can find BrainPOP content seamlessly through netTrekker searches!

To celebrate 21^st century learning and our partnership with netTrekker, I was the keynote speaker at the recent netTrekker Fest event. My keynote, 21^st Century Learning - What’s in Your Back-to-School Bag of Tricks?, was all about re-thinking education. We explored how to become 21^st century learners, how to teach 21sts century kids, and even discussed examples of 21^st century teaching ideas. I encouraged participants to become 21^st century learners by challenging them to connect online with other educators and resources at BrainPOP Educators, netTrekker Village, and Twitter. I praised Calcasieu Parish for providing the opportunity to witness 21^st century learning at this spring’s NSBA Site Visit, and encouraged participants to create their own mini-site visits with leaders in their districts. I shared global learning experiences and video footage from my experiences in classrooms in China. I also showcased the BrainPOP Internet Safety Flipchart and the Global Connections: Natural Disasters wiki and lesson that I’d shared at NECC. I energized the crowd by highlighting how to take advantage of BrainPOP’s resources, searchable within netTrekker, to reach students at a variety of levels and on a variety of topics. There was much enthusiasm about the BrainPOP-netTrekker partnership!

BrainPOP’s partnership with netTrekker will enable netTrekker users to access 28 Free BrainPOP topics - 21 BrainPOP, 6 BrainPOP Jr, 1 BrainPOP Español - these can be accessed without a BrainPOP subscription. By early September, you’ll also have access to all BrainPOP quizzes, BrainPOP Jr. games, and BrainPOP Educator lesson plans and video tutorials. For those of you who are already both netTrekker and BrainPOP Subscribers, you’ll have access to 1200+ BrainPOP resources all with a seamless sign-on experience.

What are some ways you envision using BrainPOP and netTrekker together? Please share your ideas below.

Check out this amazing list of the best web 2.0 resources from Smartersites’ Blog. There’s a ton of creative, collaborative tools organized into categories including Animation, Assessment & Evaluation, Blogging, Charts & Spreadheets, and lots more. We’re thrilled to be included among so many outstanding educational resources. I think many of these will be fantastic tools to enhance student learning, assist teacher planning, and inspire collaborative projects. I’m off to explore some of these right now.

Please post comments and share any great discoveries you make!

I always find curated, annotated lists of resources helpful, particularly when thinking about planning for a new school year. Penny Ryder, a teacher from Australia, just published a list of 20 Free Learning Technology Resources on her blog, Teaching Challenges. Check it out and see if there’s some new stuff you can integrate into your teaching this year. I’m thrilled that the list starts off with BrainPOP, and we’re in good company on there, with some familiar sites I used when I was in the classroom, as well as some cool new discoveries.

Got any favorite tech resources to add to the list? Post comments below!

Back by popular demand and just in time to kick off the school year, we’re offering our free webinar on Implementing BrainPOP Into Your School or District again! RSVP quickly - space is filling up.This is a great webinar for technology specialists and teachers who want to ensure their staff is aware of their subscription and able to get the most out of it. We’ve also got an exciting new webinar on Digital Citizenship slated for early September. Details below.

Implementing BrainPOP Into Your School or District
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
3:00 pm EDT
Duration: 1 hour

Learn how to make the most of your subscription to BrainPOP. We’ll help you get off to a running start by sharing new implementation tools for new subscribers including a Spread the Word Kit that will ensure all of your staff are aware of this resource. We’ll also provide you with all the training materials you need to ensure high participation from all of your staff. Get the lowdown on all of the free extra tips, tools, and resources on BrainPOP Educators.

RSVP - space fills up quickly!

Spotlight: Digital Citizenship
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
10 a.m. EDT
Duration: 45 minutes

The ways that students use technology are growing more and more interconnected through online communication tools and social networks. Learn how to take advantage of BrainPOP’s Digital Citizenship resources and help ensure that students’ online interactions are as safe as possible. We’ll help you kick off the school year with a Spotlight on the topic, featuring such topics as blogs, cyberbullying, digital etiquette, email and IM, social networking, and more.

RSVP - space fills up quickly!