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 .

This Wednesday, we’ve invited special guest Robert Miller, BrainPOP Advisor and winner of NSBA’s 20 to Watch Award for Emerging Technology Leaders, to join us for our first webinar in November. Robert will highlight some of the the amazing work he’s doing with his 4th and 5th graders in Port Orange, FL, using BrainPOP.  Hope you’ll join us and spread the word to your colleagues!

Featured Teacher: Robert Miller
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
4:00 pm EDT
Duration: 1 hour
Today, we’ll be joined by special guest Robert Miller, 4th and 5th grade teacher in Port Orange, FL, who’ll highlight some of the best ideas, examples, and strategies he’s found to weave BrainPOP into his existing curriculum through creative, collaborative projects that empower and motivate students.

RSVP - space fills up quickly!

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!

We’re so excited! Through some BrainPOP Educators networking and inspiration, we’ve got another school that took on creating their own movies, thanks to the creative and talented collaboration between Erin Waggoner, a District Technology Integration Specialist, and teacher, PJ Burns, from Jessamine County Schools in Nicholasville, Kentucky.  Erin was kind enough to be a guest blogger and share the process. Read on!

Not to be too “A-Team” about things, but I love it when a plan comes together!  As a former classroom teacher and computer lab teacher, I understood the importance of Brain Pop and tried to utilize it a much as possible with my students.  However, when I saw Robert Miller’s Brain Pop-esque videos last spring, I knew that I was ready for the next step and I just had to implement this idea in my classroom in the fall.

(more…)

Now that the school year is underway, we’re in full swing of conference season, and we’re really excited about the T + L conference in Denver this October 28 - 29.

Stay tuned on BrainPOP Educators for more details about special BrainPOP events happening (we’re having lots of fun planning!). For now, check out this great write up about note-taking with BrainPOP.

BrainPOP Nuggets of Knowledge

Great name!

Coming to T + L in Denver? Let us know, and be sure to stop by our booth and introduce yourself as a BrainPOP Educator!

I came across two articles today that I thought I’d share.

I thought this was a really uplifting story about how a middle school within the low-ranking Tennessee school system is boosting students’ love of learning with technology. Read all about it!

More and more accredited e-schools are popping up, and I’m always interested to read about how it works. Here’s how a family came to the decision of switching from a neighborhood public school to a public, state-funded e-school.  Take a look!

Both articles capture current trends in education. What do you think? Can you relate to either of these experiences?

It’s been great to see all these creative ways teachers and administrators get the word out to their staff to ensure they don’t miss out on BrainPOP. Here are a few examples I found recently.

Robert Miller created a dedicated page of his class website filled with information for his students, families, and peers with a great name: Your Daily Dose of BrainPOP! And Josh and Reagan, two students in the class, created POP Blog with information on how extra credit can be earned using BrainPOP!

Mr. Coley embedded the Featured Movie of the Week on his class website.

Seattle Homeschooling for the Beginner Examiner embedded our Moby widget!

Teachers Tech Blog blogs about BrainPOP!

Bryan from Taymans Tech Blog created his own BrainPOP Refresher for his middle school staff, and explained the details of their subscription so no one misses out.

and the Tweets… don’t get me started! That will get its own blog post very soon, but just a few great ideas:

Teachers who train their colleagues:

@nikilnh: Just presented features of BrainPOP teachesr may not be aware of. http://tinyurl.com/cy9k6q @brainpop

Teachers who share class updates:

Sept 11 http://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/ushistory/september11th/ Nice job @brainpop!

Teachers who retweet our tweets:

RT @brainpop: BrainPOP teachers available after school today!, 3:30-5,EDT, answering ?’s & brainstorming ideas. http://tinyurl.com/lnf9xj

And finally, teachers are becoming fans of BrainPOP on Facebook!

How are you implementing BrainPOP in your classroom, school or district? We’d love to hear your ideas!

BrainPOP is so excited about our new partnership with netTrekker! I’ve asked Danielle Abernethy, the mastermind behind netTrekker Village, to be a featured guest blogger. I’m hoping this won’t be the last time Danielle shares her experiences with us.

Last year my niece came home from school all excited about a project she had to do on her favorite president. I asked her who she selected, and she answered Abraham Lincoln. I’m always curious as to how little minds work, so I asked her why President Lincoln was her favorite. Her response, “He was born on my birthday!”

BrainPOP is a great way to introduce new topics.

Since we had our work cut out for us, I decided to take advantage of her school’s subscription to BrainPOP Jr. When I was a technology coach, I used BrainPOP movies as a way to hook interest in the lesson. BrainPOP Jr. has another great feature. It teaches the students how to take notes. Annie stops periodically throughout the movie to ask a question and take notes. I had Zoe practice this skill with Annie and Moby so that way when she furthered her own investigations she knew how to ask questions and find the answers. She even enjoyed playing with the activities found under the movie and used the activity template for her puppet’s hat.

After watching a great thorough introduction to President Lincoln, Zoe then accessed her netTrekker account. She conducted her search and refined her search by reading levels 1 and 2. She wanted to just find more movies, but her mean old aunt made her do some actual reading. I did allow her to use the Read Aloud tool as needed.

The Puppet of Abraham Lincoln

Once Zoe had all of her notes together, she decided to create a little puppet play about Abraham Lincoln. She started her play with BrainPOP’s “Pop a Joke” feature, getting a her classmates to chuckle and even introduced note taking to her fellow classmates, telling them that Moby and Annie taught her that great skill! The puppet turned out pretty neat and now resides on her bookshelf, the play got an A so she was thrilled, and Zoe gained a better understanding of why President Lincoln is her favorite US President with two fantastic tools.

And what’s even better, she now has access to both of these great resources by logging into her netTrekker account. Her BrainPOP movies are always at her fingertips with one search. Yours too! Try it today!

If you have any great lesson ideas on how to use netTrekker and BrainPOP together, please share them either in a comment below or over at the netTrekker Village discussion. boards!

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!