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!

Looking for a way to reinforce the vocabulary from your favorite BrainPOP unit? Try the game, “I Have/Who Has.”

Create and then distribute cards that feature one vocabulary word and the definition of a different vocabulary word from the same unit of study.

For example, if you’re exploring our Fossils unit, a card might contain the word “fossil” and the definition “inorganic substance,” which corresponds to the word “mineral.” Pick one student to start the game off by reading his or her word and definition as follows: “I have ‘fossil.’ Who has ‘inorganic substance?’” The student whose card contains the matching word - “mineral” - then jumps in. Continue the chain until everyone has responded. In such a way, students strengthen their vocabulary and learn valuable listening skills.

Comment below to tell us how you reinforce BrainPOP vocabulary in your classroom!

In case you missed our webinar for Library Media Specialists, you can access it at your convenience here.

I wanted to highlight some great ideas that came out of the webinar.

Units & Topics that may be of interest to Library Media Specialists:

Ways to make your life easier & extend BP to families/community outside of school make BrainPOP or BrainPOP Jr. your homepage

add BrainPOP to your bookmarks or toolbar

set up AUTO LOGIN

use library or school webpage to offer suggestions, resources, assignments…

use our BrainPOP On Your Site feature - take it a step further with assignments

have fun with our banners and badges

introduce at faculty and parent meetings. Make sure specialists know about relevant topics (Music, Health…)

highlight in district, school or parent newsletters

distribute promotional items (Just For Fun - printable bookmarks, posters, etc)

assign a resident BrainPOP expert at each school and/or grade level

utilize our Professional Development offerings to conduct hands-on training for your staff

highlight BrainPOP best practices at faculty and parent meetings

hold contests to encourage sharing and collaboration of BrainPOP best practices - we’ll be holding contests via BrainPOP Educators - teachers can win t-shirts, flip cameras, and more…

Please comment below and add on your own ideas!

A few more tips…

• If you only have one computer for the class you can take a tour of the site together. After watching the tour you can use an interactive whiteboard and ask student volunteers to click on different features and explore them as a group.

• Make it fast and easy for kids to log in. Create a url so students are automatically logged in. Or, add BrainPOP or BrainPOP Jr as a bookmark on your browser’s toolbar. Just go to the homepage and then click on the tiny Moby face at the top of the window (this may be on a tab if you have several tabs open). Then drag the icon to an empty space on your bookmark toolbar. You can also do this with specific movies you’d like kids to view. We’ve also got typeable Subscriber Stickers you can print and stick on or next to each computer monitor. Big help when you’ve got a classroom full of Kindergarteners who all want your help logging in at the same time.

• You can build BrainPOP or BrainPOP Jr. into your class routines starting in September! For example you can use BrainPOP Jr.’s Belly Up comic as a shared reading for K-3 students. Start by introducing the topic and reading the Belly Up together, modeling fluency and expression. Use the Print feature to make copies available for each of your students or partnerships. Kids can take turns reading the speech bubbles for the characters. For older kids you can use the Cassie and Rita comics from the FYI features to introduce students to new topics.

What’s worked for you? How did you introduce BrainPOP to your students? Share below!

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!

Join us for this week’s Wednesday Webinar, designed specifically for Media and Integration Specialists.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009
4:00 pm EDT
Duration: 1 hour

Are you responsible for integrating BrainPOP with your school or districts’ curriculum and content area teachers? Learn how to make the most of your BrainPOP subscription. We’ll show you a range of implementation tools, including the Spread the Word kit that lets your entire staff know they’ve got access to our resources. We’ll also provide you with the training materials you need to ensure high usage within your school or district. Get the lowdown on BrainPOP Educators and its free lesson plans, video tutorials, graphic organizers, and more.

RSVP - space fills up quickly!

We hosted our first after school online chat on Friday. It was pretty great! We even had a special guest join in (hint - the woman behind the voice of Annie!).  Here are some ideas that came out of it.  We’ll continue these online chats every Friday after school. Join us this Friday, September 18, from 3:30 - 5:00pm, EDT. We’ll be happy to answer questions & brainstorm ideas for integration.

*Make sure you and your colleagues register on BrainPOP Educators so you don’t miss out on free tips, tools, and resources!

*Let colleagues know about BrainPOP ESL for second language learners, FREE during beta phase!

*Professional Development Resources:

Graphic organizers for planning out a BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. topic over an entire week, shared by Robert Miller
http://www.brainpop.com/educators/professional_development/

*Resources for new users:

http://www.brainpop.com/educators/new_subscribers/

*Grant Writing Resources:

- Funding BrainPOP

- BrainPOP Effectiveness Study

- www.donorschoose.org
- www.grantwrangler.com
- www.ing-usa.com

*Consider BrainPOP for after school programs!

*Familiarize yourself with all of the interactive features on BrainPOP with our webinars

*Ideas for BEFORE viewing movie:
-POP Quiz (pre-assessment)
-review Vocabulary activity page (BrainPOP)
-review Word Wall (BrainPOP Jr.)
-use FYI as shared reading in small groups or as a class
-Cassie & Rita comic (FYI)
-Belly Up comic (BrainPOP Jr.)

*Ideas for DURING the movie:
-print Activity Pages in advance - use for scaffolding, note-taking…
-Pause & discuss! Tons of opportunities to make students active participants while viewing
–> ask questions, make predictions, activate prior learning, etc…

*Ideas for AFTER the movie:

Here’s where we left off. What do you like to do after viewing BrainPOP movies? Share your ideas!

We’ll be hosting our first after school, online chat tomorrow. Kari, Laura and I will be available to answer questions, brainstorm ideas for integrating BrainPOP into your curriculum, and anything else you might need to support you in using getting the most out of any of our products.

Join us!

Friday, September 11, 2009

3:30 - 5:00pm, EDT

Drop in and say hello!

Welcome back to school, everyone. I hope you’re off to a fantastic start. I wanted to spend some time catching you up on our latest news and features, so you can take using BrainPOP to a new level this year! And it’s all FREE! A big part of me wants to go back to the classroom, just so I can use BrainPOP in all these new ways that I hadn’t thought of when I was teaching.

I’ll go into more depth with some of these features in the next few weeks, but for now, here’s a rundown!

Research - How does BrainPOP impact student achievement? Read the research.

BrainPOP ESL - Check out our newest product for English language learners and teachers. Free while in beta phase!

Getting Started - New to BrainPOP? We’ve got everything you need to be up and running in no time.

Spread the Word - Let your staff and community know you’ve got BrainPOP with our implementation tools.

Webinars - Whether you’re a new or experienced user, you are sure to gain fresh ideas from our webinars. RSVP for upcoming webinars or watch our archived webinars at your convenience.

Curriculum Calendar - Just published this summer, our calendar makes planning a breeze. Get a heads up on timely topics you can weave right into your curriculum, and access our Spotlights to help plan out your year.

Funding BrainPOP - Resources to help you fit BrainPOP into your funding strategy.

Spotlights - Find a ton of resources to launch into these important back-to-school topics: Digital Citizenship (free during September) and Science Skills.

Special Back to School Promotions - Upgrade, renew, and save on Media Lab and multi-year District and School Subscriptions. For details, please contact our District Relations team.

It’s crazy how quickly we have to shift from summer to school. I remember how intense and draining September can be. It’s my hope that the resources we offer on BrainPOP Educators can make your lives just a bit easier, while enriching your students’ education with a quality resource. Here’s to a happy, healthy school year!

We’ve got big news to share here at BrainPOP! The integration is complete - you can now access your BrainPOP resources seamlessly from your netTrekker search results.

What does that mean for you? If you are a netTrekker subscriber, it means that you can access all of our great BrainPOP resources from directly within your netTrekker search results. Just contact your netTrekker Customer Relationship Specialist. You will need to provide your BrainPOP username and password. It’s free.

What does it look like? Picture this. Your students want to research topics related to online communication and blogging. They go to netTrekker’s safe search engine and type in “blog” as their search topic. BrainPOP’s “Blogs” topic appears as a search result. Your students can then click on the BrainPOP results and go directly to the movie, quiz, and other great interactive resources without re-logging into your BrainPOP account. It is seamless, easy, and powerful!

Not a netTrekker subscriber yet? Try it out! Email netTrekker and request a free trial.

What’s the extra scoop? Now through September 14th, all netTrekker users have access to all BrainPOP content. All you have to do is a keyword search for “BrainPOP” and the results will appear. No set up is necessary; it’s all automatic.

After September 14th, all netTrekkers will have access to 28 free BrainPOP topics even without a BrainPOP subscription. Topics include: Mars, Comparing Prices, Angles, Internet Safety, Nutrition, International Space Station, Classifying Animals and more! netTrekker subscribers also have access to all BrainPOP quizzes, BrainPOP Jr. games, and BrainPOP Educator lesson plans and video tutorials.

Neat, huh?

What do you think? Tell us how you plan to take advantage of the new BrainPOP - netTrekker integration in your classroom today!