This totally made my day!

I want to thank you for the webinar last Wedneday. It was filled with helpful and useful information. I couldn’t wait to share with our librarian, Margaret Frick.

Today she used the quiz with few different grade levels. The tip of having the students show which answer they pick by moving to a different corner worked really well.

Looking forward to the next webinar.

Fred Delventhal
Instructional Technology Coordinator
Barrett Elementary School
Arlington, VA

Join us each Wednesday at 4pm for a free webinar! Today we’ll be sharing tips on how to Maximize Your District Subscription. Join us, or check out our upcoming webinars.

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!

Just saw this fantastic new flipchart, created and posted on Promethean Planet by Kirsten Linsenbardt.

Description:

You must have a Brain Pop Jr. subscription to view the video. After watching the video on migration, students complete various activities, an ActiVote test, and can learn more through other linked activities.

Great job weaving your interactive whiteboard into BrainPOP, Kirsten!

If you’re interested in getting more out of your interactive whiteboards, you can visit our partner site, Promethean Planet, for over 60 flipchart lessons that include BrainPOP.

Are you creating materials to go along with BrainPOP for your students? We want to see! Please share what you’re doing with fellow BrainPOP Educators!

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?

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!

On August 17, 2009 I had the privilege to meet the extraordinary staff of Harlandale ISD in San Antonio, Texas.

Many of the teachers that I spoke with loved that students could email their quiz results to the teacher. Some secondary teachers even set up an individual folder for each student to keep track of their BrainPOP quizzes. What a great way to ease report card time! All the students need to do is choose the Graded Quiz option and then type in the teacher’s email address at the end. Did you also know that you can now take the quizzes full-screen? Just click on the icon with the arrows in the top right corner of the movie screen. To return to normal view, just hit the Esc key. For those of you who have interactive whiteboards, the quizzes also work great with learner response systems.

Please spread the word to your colleagues and tell us about your creative ideas for using BrainPOP quizzes with students by sharing your comments below!

On Tuesday, July 29 I had the opportunity to spend the day with the wonderful teachers of Spring Branch ISD in Houston, Texas. As avid users of Promethean ActivBoards, they generated many creative ideas on how to connect all the resources available on BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. with ActivStudio. Here is what they shared:

• Using the camera tool, teachers can take a picture of the graphic on Tim’s shirt. Then they can use it as a picture prompt for students to write a journal entry.
• Students can use the highlighter tool, as well as the pen, to underline verbs, circle nouns, and highlight the main idea in a passage on the FYI section of a unit in BrainPOP.
• Students can use their Activote learner response systems to answer the quiz questions. Then they can see their results compared to those of their classmates.
• Using the words from the Word Wall feature of a topic in BrainPOP Jr. and the camera tool on ActivStudio, teachers can create flipcharts where students drag the vocabulary word and match it to the correct definition.
• With a Promethean Board, BrainPOP can be used in learning centers where students can work in pairs or individually as an alternative to whole class instruction.

Check out our interactive whiteboard resources and special Promethean partnership resources, including over 60 interactive flipchart lessons and our Resource Pack, chock full of BrainPOP character clipart, sounds, and graphic organizers.

We hear that BrainPOP is often used with all types of interactive whiteboards and learner response systems. Tell us how you use these in your classroom, we’d love to share that experience with other educators.