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!

The continuing saga of Ben and Moby resumes as brainpopesl.com presents lesson 5.3. In this lesson it seems that Ben’s memory has lapsed as he reminisces about his and Moby’s childhood together. Moby sets Ben’s memory straight, as our English learners get to know the verb “be” in the past simple tense.

Watch and enjoy - and let us know what you and your students think by emailing us or posting comments below!

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!

We’ve been really impressed to hear about so many of you blogging with your classes this year. (In case your students need a primer on blogging, check out our Blogs movie!) The blogosphere has become an important engine for social change and presents a terrific opportunity for kids to utilize 21st-century skills. To that end, with this post we are taking part in this year’s Blog Action Day, now in its third year. The main goal of Blog Action Day, which takes place every October 15th, is to harness the power of blogging for a particular cause. The causes change each year, and this year the cause is climate change.

If you run a classroom blog, this event presents a perfect opportunity to have your students discuss what they know about climate change as well as their personal opinions and any calls to action. In a structured environment, blogging can help young learners hone their persuasive writing skills and feel a sense of ownership over the final published piece. Before they sit down to write, we encourage young bloggers to brush up on their climate change knowledge by exploring some of our Earth awareness topics. And of course, we’d love to hear any stories about your students’ blogging adventures.

How many times do you have to ask students to remember to put their names and dates on all of their work? We recently received a request to add fields for student names and dates on our typeable Activity Pages. Voila! Thanks to a fantastic production team, students now have the option of typing in their names before printing. Wait. It gets better! The date is automatically filled in.

We also upgraded our printed quiz. Now, when students print their completed quizzes, an X appears over any incorrect answers and it’s easier to distinguish the right answer from the wrong answer. This will show up whether you are using a B&W or color printer.

Special thanks to Darryl Joyner of Arlington, VA for the great suggestions!

BrainPOP For Library Media Specialists
This Wednesday, October 14, 2009
4:00 pm EDT
Duration: 1 hour

We love our librarians! We’re excited to share some ideas on how to use BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. for research and collaborative projects with whole groups, small groups, and individuals. We’ll highlight relevant topics BrainPOP covers, ways to collaborate with your staff, and ideas for connecting learning outside of school. We’ll also talk about the tools and features you’ll find on BrainPOP Educators.

RSVP now if you haven’t already! Space fills up quickly!

Are you a library media specialist? How are you using BrainPOP? What do you hope to learn from this webinar? Post suggestions below!

Last spring, more than 700 schools in 25 states temporarily closed due to outbreaks of the H1N1 virus (swine flu). We’re all hoping for the best this flu season. But as schools prepare for the possibilities of illness-related absences and disruptions to studies, we’d like to help. We’re offering all schools two weeks of complimentary remote access to BrainPOP’s resources during school hours (7 am-5:30 pm local time). Pre-register now for your two weeks of access, then activate the account when and if you need it.

Current Subscribers: Remote access during local school hours is enabled. You’re all set.

Non-subscribers: Pre-register here.

All: Stay posted here on BrainPOP Educators to read and share tips about coping this flu season. You can subscribe to an RSS feed of our blog posts so you don’t miss a thing. Be well!

What are you doing to prepare your students? Share tips below!

We at BrainPOP have been doing our homework to make sure we’re as informed and up-to-date as possible on the latest science and recommendations from doctors and agencies like the Centers for Disease Control. And of course, we’re eager to share our findings with you and the children you teach, so that you can learn and together prepare to face this upcoming flu season. To that end, we’d like to direct you to the following resources:

-BrainPOP’s Swine Flu movie has just been updated to include the most recent information available about the novel H1N1 flu. Its related features (FYI, activities, and Q&As) are also available for further exploration.

-BrainPOP Jr’s Washing Hands movie serves as an excellent primer for younger students on the do’s and don’ts of safe personal hygiene.

-BrainPOP Educators is offering two free swine-flu-related lesson plans, one for BrainPOP users, and one for BrainPOP Jr. users.

- The CDC offers H1N1 Flu resources specifically for K-12 schools: http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/schools/

We hope these resources will prove to be valuable tools in raising awareness and clearing up misconceptions about the novel H1N1 flu. And as always, we’d love to hear your feedback, so please let us know how we’re doing.

Spotlight: Hispanic Heritage
History, Cultures, and Leaders

With topics from Christopher Columbus, Cesar Chavez, and Frida Kahlo to the Conquistadors, Maya Civilization, and the Mexican Revolution, BrainPOP’s Spotlight: Hispanic Heritage is the perfect resource for Hispanic Heritage Month, which winds down October 15th. BrainPOP Jr. topics include Mexico and Columbus Day. Share your creative Hispanic Heritage lesson plans on BrainPOP Educators!

Spotlight: Paleontology & Anthropology

This month’s Spotlight: Paleontology & Anthropology covers such topics as carbon dating, Charles Darwin, extinction, human evolution, geologic time, Jane Goodall, fossils (K-3) and much more. Check out the BrainPOP Educators dinosaur-themed graphic organizer!

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.

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