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!

Check out the fantastic bulletin board display that Ann Combs sent in! I love how her idea is easy to customize and change throughout the year. Great idea, Ann. Thanks for sharing! You can find fun bits of BrainPOP clipart on our Just For Fun page too add to bulletin boards or any project or assignment.

Here’s what Ann has to say:

I was inspired by one of our third graders. He was working on a “Draw About It” and he drew a wonderful picture of Moby on his computer. I asked him if he could recreate his picture on a large piece of paper for me. He did a great job with it. I had to display it somehow. So . . . I thought that I would just have Moby and the “Write About It” prompt with the student work displayed. The bulletin board lettering and Moby stay up all year. The “Write About It” prompt and the student work can be changed throughout the year. I plan to ask the same student artist to draw Tim for me when school resumes!

Ann Combs
Melvindale-Northern Allen Park School District
Melvindale, Michigan

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.

How amazing is this? Arlington, Virginia 2nd Grade Teacher, Ms. Schneider, invites her students to follow along via her blog and videoconferencing as she treks to the Arctic’s Edge to research climate change. She used BrainPOP to build students’ background knowledge.

We’re thrilled to be included in this adventure and encourage you to check out her website and follow along on the adventure!

Have you used BrainPOP to prepare students for field trips or travel? Try it and let us know about it by posting comments below!

Third grade teacher, Heather Hamker, from Avon Lake, Ohio, was recently the Featured Teacher on our partner, Promethean Planet. She created a fabulous interactive lesson on Dinosaurs that showcases BrainPOP on her interactive Promethean board.  Seeing her classroom in action is so inspiring!

To welcome you back from vacation, we’ve added a brand new video tutorial that I am super excited about! Check out Note Taking With BrainPOP and see how to take advantage of the Activity Pages and FYIs to teach this important skill to your students. A special thanks to Melissa Farran, 4th grade teacher at PS 261 in Brooklyn, NY, for sharing her expertise and her incredible class with us. Take a look, try it out, and please let me know what you think!

I am thrilled to feature one of our first place Election ‘08 Lesson Plan Contest Winners as our first guest blogger!

Beatrice shares her experiences using BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. with her two children as a homeschool educator in this powerful essay.

Beatrice’s award winning lesson can be found here.

A Different Way to Learn

by Beatrice Garcia

Eight years ago I decided to leave my traditional school classroom in Miami, Florida, and dedicate my life to help my daughter who had been recently diagnosed with autism. Three years later, I started my own school at home to teach her, since her first grade teacher told me she was sure Marie would never graduate from high school. I always remember this teacher. She was the one who made me realize that special needs children can achieve more than we can imagine if we have the interest to find new ways to teach them.

Among the many curriculums, educational materials, and resources that I have put together to teach and inspire my daughter to want to learn, there is one that is her favorite, BrainPOP Jr.

(more…)