TCEA turned out to be a hit in Austin, TX this year. You can see our booth was drawing a big crowd while Peter was doing a demo. If you weren’t able to attend this conference, check out our schedule to see if we’ll be at one you can attend! We love meeting BrainPOP Educators!
Mike Myers. Rick Fox. Bacon. Smarties (the chocolate kind, not that gross powdery kind). The legendary Scott Abbott and Chris Haney, co-inventors of Trivial Pursuit. And now … joining the list of things that make Canada great is … our very own Laura Agrusti! Laura will spend today at the Hamilton campus of Brock University’s Teaching & Technology: A Collaborative Educational Showcase. If you’re Brock U-bound as well, don’t miss her sessions with Chris Lee (Joyce Public Schools) - or the special BrainPOP promo she’ll be offering.
Get the details here.
Just got back from Florida, where I attended FETC and two incredible school visits. I’ll be blogging about those next week, but wanted to share my first school visit. Before FETC, I visited Robert Miller at Port Orange Elementary School in Port Orange, Florida. I drove up to the school to find “Welcome BrainPOP” signs. I was touched by such a warm welcome. But wait — there’s more. Upon entering the school, I notice some pictures of Tim, Moby, and Annie on the wall. They continued all the way to the office, and I soon realized, beyond. Every hallway had BrainPOP-inspired artwork and writing. My heart was aflutter.
Basically, this is the story of a school who created such a buzz around BrainPOP that it united the school and fueled some major creative energy and motivation. The kids had prepared some questions for my visit, my favorite being, “What do you need on your resume to work at BrainPOP?” Brilliant! I had three extremely intelligent 5th graders give me a tour of the school. Every classroom I went into, every teacher I met, had this amazing energy and enthusiasm for learning. I loved seeing work documenting the process of BrainPOP lessons. It’s nice to step out of the office now and then!
I also got to see Robert Miller’s fifth graders working on a new round of BrainPOP-inspired movies. I met with small groups and gave feedback on their scripts and storyboards. My tour guides were the ones who created the Moby Morsels program, so I got to see it in person. Totally student run, this trio previews BrainPOP movies and activities, and creates challenges around them worth a certain number of Moby Morsels (stamps). They keep track of stamps on 5 x 7 index cards, and as students accumulate points, they can trade in their morsels for prizes.
I have never seen such a POPped out school! What a gem. I hope to hear about many more schools like this one! Thanks for having me, Port Orange Elementary!
Contagious excitement? Inspired? Tell us about it! How is BrainPOP motivating your students?
Take a peek at the entire list of BrainPOP events!
I’m co-presenting two sessions on Thursday with Robert Miller from Port Orange Elementary School in Florida! The first is called Sweet! The Candy Bar Lab! Integrating BrainPOP in Inquiry-Based Science from 12:30-1:25. Come join us in room W304F to a science lab that melds BrainPOP’s animations with digital data collection to make such topics concrete. It is a terrific opportunity to see the way that BrainPOP resources are integrated into a Florida classroom.
Our second session, Take Your Teaching to the Next Dimension With 21st Century Tools, is on Thursday from 4:30-5:25 pm. Come join us in room W311B to learn about Top Web 2.0 tools to add to your teacher “bag of tricks.” 21st century learning will be addressed. Attendees will learn about a variety of resources including netTrekker, Webspiration, Rubistar, BrainPOP, ePals, Saywire, VoiceThread, Animoto, Google Docs, and more! Plus, attendees will leave with online professional learning communities where they can collaborate online to continue the FETC learning journey!
Tuesday evening, stop by and see me at the Promethean Technology Showcase and Celebration from 4-7 pm in room SW2302. Discover new ways to integrate BrainPOP into your ActivClassroom.
In addition to offering conference sessions, we have lots of terrific events planned for the exhibit hall floor! Stop by booth 854 to take part in the BrainPOP Challenge, catch a demo of our integration with netTrekker, and pose for a pic with Moby!
BrainPOP at FETC 2010
January 12-15
Booth 854
Orlando, FL
Attending FETC? Make sure we’re on your itinerary. We’ll have educator-led presentations and demos, give-aways, news, and much more. Play a round of the BrainPOP Challenge, pick up some classroom goodies, hear the latest on all our resources, share your best practices, connect with BrainPOP’s staff, pick up a copy of the science based research about BrainPOP, and take advantage of a special FETC promotion.
BrainPOP ESL just got back from an exciting visit to Chicago, at the 33rd Annual Statewide Conference for Teachers Serving Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Students. It was cold and snowy in Chicago all week, but the BrainPOP ESL exhibit was a hotbed of excitement. We were happy to meet so many new friends and enthusiastic teachers.
Among these educators was Susana Ayala of Avon Center School in Round Lake Beach, Illinois. Our warm congratulations to Susana upon winning a raffle for a free School Combo Subscription to BrainPOP, BrainPOP Jr., and BrainPOP Espanol!
BrainPOP ESL sets out again to meet teachers around the country in the New Year. Look for BrainPOP ESL at these upcoming conferences: FETC (Flagship Ed-Tech Conference) in Orlando, January 13-15, NABE (National Association for Bilingual Education) in Denver, February 3-6, and TCEA (Texas Computer Education Association) in Austin, Texas, February 10-12.
We love getting feedback. If you haven’t already done so, please check out BrainPOP ESL and let us know what you and your students think of the site!
BrainPOP is on the road at many conferences in December, and is pleased to announce a host of sessions presented by our users this month. This is a great opportunity for you to hear about the integration of BrainPOP by classroom teachers. If you are in the area, attend their session. You’ll also want to stop by the booth, catch a demo, and play the BrainPOP Challenge.
Our first stop is in Virginia for the VSTE conference, November 30-December 1. Adina Popa, from Loudon County and I will be presenting A Classroom without Walls: Using Web 2.0 tools to become 21st Century Global Citizens and Stock Market, Mortgages, and Credit Cards! Do YOUR Students Understand the Current Financial Crisis? Join us at each session to learn more about how BrainPOP is being used in Loudon County schools.
BrainPOP is also looking forward to the LACUE conference in Louisiana, December 2-4. Trish Sheridan, Louisiana BrainPOP user, will be presenting Making Our Lessons Pop with BrainPop. Natalie Lartigue, Louisiana educator from Belle Chasse Middle School, will also be presenting The Top Ten Ways to Use Brain Pop to Meet the Diverse Needs of All Learners. Stop by their sessions to learn more!
This month, BrainPOP is also headed to TETC in Nashville, December 2-3. Our BrainPOP Advisor and Instructional Coach with Knox County Schools, Teryl Magee, will be presenting Make Your Lessons POP! with BrainPOP.
The middle of the month, BrainPOP is headed to Minnesota for the TIES Conference, December 14-15. I’ll be presenting Do YOUR Student Understand the Current Financial Crisis? Spotlight on Financial Literacy.
Are you presenting at an upcoming conference like FETC? We’d love to hear what you’re covering. Send us a synopsis of your presentation and we’ll send you a complimentary Classroom subscription.
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 .
