The ECOO Conference (Ontario, November 12-13) marks our first participation in a Canadian conference. Stop by our booth and say hi!

Mark your calendars to attend two special sessions featuring BrainPOP.  Lucas Kent, Canadian teacher and author of 6 Steps to Success in Teaching with Technology will share his experiences incorporating technology in his school and highlight the integration of BrainPOP and Promethean resources in his classroom in his Friday session at 9:00 am, room 1438, 6 Steps to Success with BrainPOP & ActivExpressions. Dr. Kari Stubbs, Director of 21st Century Learning at BrainPOP will present Digital Citizenship: Teach Your Students How to Use Technology Responsibly, Friday at 1:00 in room 1321. Join this session to discuss digital citizenship and leave with a toolkit of resources on blogs, internet safety, email and IM, and more that can be easily integrated into your curriculum.

Are you a Canadian educator who uses BrainPOP? We’d love to hear from you!

We’re often asked about our fun booth set up at conferences. I just returned from Denver, CO’s T+L Conference, and we received lots of questions about our stools. I think these would be great for the classroom, since they’re stackable, so here’s the scoop.  You can get inexpensive wooden benches at Ikea, and… wait for it… WASHABLE toilet seat covers at Target! A teachers dream!

Want to see these in person? Join us at an upcoming conference!

Do you tweet? BrainPOP does! We use twitter as another way to support our educators. BrainPOP tweets about featured movies, monthly spotlights, upcoming conferences, and current BrainPOP events. It is just one more way that we support a professional learning community among our users.

To meet some of our BrainPOP twitter followers, BrainPOP hosted its first ever TweetUp last week. The event was held in conjunction with the NSBA T+L conference in Denver. What’s a TweetUp? It is a chance for BrainPOP followers to develop a sense of community, by meeting one another, the BrainPOP team, and connecting. Our first TweetUp was extra special because we were able to honor two of our BrainPOP Advisors, Teryl Magee and Robert Miller for receiving the 2009 NSBA “20 to Watch” award.

Attendees learned about the event by following @brainpop on twitter. Our first TweetUp was a success. Attendees mingled with BrainPOP team members and each other. Even Moby was on hand for pictures! TweetUp attendees were treated to a special t-shirt, and encouraged to tweet throughout the event.

To be among the first to hear about local BrainPOP TweetUps and events, be sure to follow BrainPOP on twitter@brainpop .

Are you attending the NSBA T+L conference in Denver? If so, come check us out at Booth 313! Pose with Moby, connect with BrainPOP staff, participate in the BrainPOP challenge, catch a demo, and more! We’re even featuring a few of our BrainPOP Educators, including two of the newest crop of 20 to Watch. They’ll be on hand to share technology integration strategies and answer questions. Pick up a copy of our new science based research, too. See you in Denver! Checkout our full BrainPOP T+L conference schedule.

Here’s a list of our full conference schedule this school year. We hope to see you on the road!

What conferences are you attending this school year?

Please join us in congratulating our BrainPOP advisors Teryl Magee and Robert Miller, on receiving NSBA’s 2009 “20 to Watch Award” for Emerging Technology Leaders.

Teryl, an instructional coach with Knox County School District in Tennessee, is passionate about integrating technology into the curriculum, thus preparing her students to be productive 21st-century citizens. Another passion of Ms. Magee’s is helping teachers, from kindergarten to high school, learn how to use technology in effective ways in their classrooms.

Robert, a fourth and fifth grade teacher at Port Orange Elementary School in Port Orange, FL is also an Apple Distinguished Educator. He’s passionate about integrating technology, including movie-making and web publishing, into his teaching.

You can meet these superstar BrainPOP advisors in our booth at the upcoming NSBA T+L conference, where they’ll answer questions and share technology integration strategies and tips.

Join us in congratulating Teryl Magee and Robert Miller!

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.

Checkout our new flipchart on Online Safety, available on Promethean Planet! It’s a great classroom resource for back-to-school. Use it with the BrainPOP Digital Citizenship Spotlight and free Internet Safety poster to teach your students how to interact and communicate safely online.

Debuted at the NECC conference this summer, the Online Safety flipchart features the BrainPOP movie, interactive vocabulary page, BrainPOP quiz, and more.

Promethean Planet offers many BrainPOP resources, including other BrainPOP flipcharts and the BrainPOP Resource Pack.

Share a comment! How could you use this resource in your classroom?

I’m thrilled to bring back Lucas Kent as a guest blogger. We were so lucky to have Lucas join us at NECC this year and get to know him in person. Lucas’ website offers super helpful tips for integrating technology into your classroom. I highly recommend checking it out and subscribing to his monthly newsletter.

BrainPOP & NECC

A great way to end the school year is to attend the annual National Education Computing Conference. This year’s conference was held in Washington D.C. and again was a resounding success with over 18, 000 attendees.

This year I had the pleasure to work with BrainPOP.com, one of my favourite companies that is taking the educational community by storm. Working with the BrainPOP staff for 3 days and checking out the other exhibitors at NECC only confirmed to me that BrainPOP is one of the most professional and fun e-learning companies out there.

BrainPOP provides educational videos, quizzes, lessons and more for K-12 students. In addition they are constantly adding new features like their new and improved BrainPOP Educators site that should be part of every teacher’s arsenal.

Next year’s NECC is being held in Colorado and again is a worthwhile experience. I always enjoy the sessions, exhibits and most of all, networking with other educators from around the world. So start planning now and see you at next year’s conference.

Tornados! Earthquakes! Floods! Who’s not fascinated by natural disasters? Our very own Dr. Kari Stubbs co-presented a fabulous workshop on teaching about Natural Disasters that made me want to run right back to the classroom. Not to worry if you couldn’t be there — all of the details and resources you’ll need to plan for it are here! If you’re interested in utilizing social learning networks, fostering global awareness and communication, and taking collaboration to the next level, then take a moment to check it out. To further entice you, one of BrainPOP’s August Spotlights will be on Natural Disasters, so check back in August to preview our movies and interactive activities to help support your teaching.

We are having an amazing time at NECC! I’ve met so many cool, creative teachers and will be returning to NY with a ton of inspiration to share with you. Keep an eye out for fun photos and new tech tools to try out with your students in the near future, as well as exciting announcements of new developments from BrainPOP! Stay tuned…