Welcome Back to School! Today is the first day of school for many American school children. To celebrate, President Barack Obama will address our nation’s students to emphasize the value of education. Get a sneak peek of his brief prepared speech, and checkout BrainPOP’s movie on Presidential Power and BrainPOP Jr.’s movie on the President. BrainPOP’s Red, White, and Blue Spotlight is also a terrific resource for a quick review of the branches of government, democracy, or the U.S. constitution.

How are you celebrating the first day of school?

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!

What do BrainPOP and netTrekker have in common? 1). They both celebrated their 10^th birthdays this summer. 2). They’re powerful 21^st century teaching tools. 3). They have partnered together so you can find BrainPOP content seamlessly through netTrekker searches!

To celebrate 21^st century learning and our partnership with netTrekker, I was the keynote speaker at the recent netTrekker Fest event. My keynote, 21^st Century Learning - What’s in Your Back-to-School Bag of Tricks?, was all about re-thinking education. We explored how to become 21^st century learners, how to teach 21sts century kids, and even discussed examples of 21^st century teaching ideas. I encouraged participants to become 21^st century learners by challenging them to connect online with other educators and resources at BrainPOP Educators, netTrekker Village, and Twitter. I praised Calcasieu Parish for providing the opportunity to witness 21^st century learning at this spring’s NSBA Site Visit, and encouraged participants to create their own mini-site visits with leaders in their districts. I shared global learning experiences and video footage from my experiences in classrooms in China. I also showcased the BrainPOP Internet Safety Flipchart and the Global Connections: Natural Disasters wiki and lesson that I’d shared at NECC. I energized the crowd by highlighting how to take advantage of BrainPOP’s resources, searchable within netTrekker, to reach students at a variety of levels and on a variety of topics. There was much enthusiasm about the BrainPOP-netTrekker partnership!

BrainPOP’s partnership with netTrekker will enable netTrekker users to access 28 Free BrainPOP topics - 21 BrainPOP, 6 BrainPOP Jr, 1 BrainPOP Español - these can be accessed without a BrainPOP subscription. By early September, you’ll also have access to all BrainPOP quizzes, BrainPOP Jr. games, and BrainPOP Educator lesson plans and video tutorials. For those of you who are already both netTrekker and BrainPOP Subscribers, you’ll have access to 1200+ BrainPOP resources all with a seamless sign-on experience.

What are some ways you envision using BrainPOP and netTrekker together? Please share your ideas below.

Checkout our new flipchart on Online Safety, available on Promethean Planet! It’s a great classroom resource for back-to-school. Use it with the BrainPOP Digital Citizenship Spotlight and free Internet Safety poster to teach your students how to interact and communicate safely online.

Debuted at the NECC conference this summer, the Online Safety flipchart features the BrainPOP movie, interactive vocabulary page, BrainPOP quiz, and more.

Promethean Planet offers many BrainPOP resources, including other BrainPOP flipcharts and the BrainPOP Resource Pack.

Share a comment! How could you use this resource in your classroom?