You’ve heard all the buzz about games in the classroom – but does game-based learning work with differentiated instruction? Can games really meet the needs of all your students? Allisyn Levy and special guest Matthew Marino, assistant professor of Special Education at Washington State University, are here to help. This webinar covers strategies for integrating games and ideas for using them as formative assessments. You’ll get a tour of GameUp and the chance to share your own favorite resources.

Many BrainPOP Educators are using the latest developments in the presidential election campaigns to teach their students about democracy, voting, presidential responsibilities, and more. Our movies from the BrainPOP U.S. Government and Law unit and BrainPOP Jr. Government notebook can help! Here are some updated lesson plans to help you use BrainPOP to engage your class in meaningful conversations and activities about the 2012 presidential elections:

Grades K-3
The President
Your Right to Vote

Grades 3-5
Let’s Vote For Our President
Battle for the Presidency
Your Opinion Matters
Your Right to Vote
The Election

Grades 5-8
Direct Democracy vs. Representative Democracy
Path to Be the President
Choosing the President of the United States
Cast Your Vote

Grades 9-12
Cast Your Vote

Are you incorporating the debates and primaries into your classroom instruction? Share your ideas in the comments, or submit a lesson plan of your own!

It’s a rare teacher who encourages students to visit another world when they should be focused at school. But that’s exactly how Joel Levin, a computer teacher at Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School, got his 2nd-graders engaged.

Joel introduced the game Minecraft – in which players create new civilizations – with a simple instruction: “Think of this world as part of school.”  He shares, ”Over several weeks, students will collaborate, share limited resources, and create a functioning society.  Through the lens of the game, they will be introduced to the concepts of digital citizenship — each child must behave responsibly and treat his or her fellow players with respect.  Students wishing to learn more about the game are encouraged to practice basic research skills as they search the various wikis and forums devoted to the game.

Joel become so passionate about using Minecraft in school that he ultimately teamed up with partners around the globe to create a version of the game, MinecraftEdu,  specifically for use in educational environments.

According to minecraftedu.com, the game “is being used to teach more than just computer skills. It easily lends itself to science, technology, engineering and math explorations (STEM). But beyond that, language teachers are strengthening communication skills, civics teachers are exploring how societies function, and history teachers are having their students recreate ancient civilizations.”

Others are catching on too. Joel inspired fellow gamer, Owen Long, a Network Systems Manager at the all-girls Spence School in New York City, to introduce the game there as well. Owen runs a weekly lunch club that students choose to attend during their lunch periods, and typically has a full house.

Both Joel and Owen found the game engaged students “through the roof,” with kids literally jumping out of their seats to help one another. Minecraft’s built-in chat feature fostered communication both on- and offline, adding the additional dimension of collaboration. Students are coming up with their own worlds, both realistic and fiction, and taking it from replicating a landmark like the Golden Gate Bridge to creating an entire civilization from scratch, by collecting and experimenting with different materials and tools to build.

“I like building things that I can’t build in the real world,” said one Spence student.

MinecraftEdu also lets teachers ensure the game environment is safe – it gives them the ability to control many of the game’s variables.

Joel coached, “You’re all part of one class, one team, helping each other to get further on this adventure.”

Are you using Minecraft or other digital games with your students? Please share your experiences!

Digital Storytelling is a powerful educational tool because it’s engaging for students, encourages creativity, and can provide important context expressing understanding of classroom studies. Students can create digital stories to process what they are learning in a creative way, or as an assessment and final reflection at the end of a unit. BrainPOP offers a wide variety of animations that can help prepare your kids to tell a good story.  Check out BrainPOP’s  main idea and prewriting video to help students construct their ideas,  idioms and clichés to learn about what to avoid, dialogue, mood and tone and show not tell to help them write at their most expressive!  Once primed and ready,  students can create their own digital stories to share with classmates.

So what are digital stories? In a nutshell, digital stories are stories that are created digitally – from simple slide shows, with or without accompanying audio, to interactive animations. Creating digital stories in class is a fun way to turn students from media consumers to media producers.

There are several types of stories that are easy to create, using free software that will run on almost any school computer. Stories can be a series of visuals, or images plus audio. Students can

• create slide shows with Power Point, Keynote (or OpenOffice‘s free alternative)
• use ToonDoo, Pixton, ComicLife or any online comic maker to design comic strips
• create animation with Scratch – these can be simple cartoons, or incorporate interactivity
• or even build 3D worlds with Storytelling Alice.

Paint.NET or skitch are excellent free image editor students can use to make changes to their photos, clip art, or other graphics in their stories.

Inspiration for stories can come from almost anywhere: biographical events, stories in existing books and movies – without infringing on copyright, of course! – and even fairy tales and nursery rhymes. The important thing is to be creative, and find the best tool to express the particular ideas you are trying to share.

Think back to your own elementary school days. Could you have designed an innovative solution that preserved food and reduced contamination? How about a robot that conquered a set of pre-determined missions in 2 ½ minutes?  You don’t have to answer that.  But for the thousands of teachers and students who put in endless hours each year to compete in the LEGO Robotics Challenge – whose 2012 theme is Food Factor – it’s all in a day’s work.

As a former LEGO Robotics team coach myself, I’ve always had a special place in my heart for this competition. This year, I was thrilled to have the chance to visit the team at PS 261 in Brooklyn, NY, as they toiled away. I brought along a few other BrainPOP staffers, and we were blown away by the level of engagement we saw.  It was great to get out from behind our computers at work, into the classroom – and see first-hand how BrainPOP helped the students learn about relevant topics like Diabetes.  To capture the feeling, I wanted to share a few comments from my colleagues. Please read on!

A special thanks to the team’s coaches, co-coaches, and teachers: Scott Howard, Nadya Robinson, and 7^th-grader, Elijah Robinson. We’re so impressed and inspired by the work you are doing! We’ll be cheering you on as you compete on Saturday!

Those kids have so much energy and enthusiasm for their work. It was a great experience for me, personally, to see how kids do projects in the classroom. It was also nice to see them work in teams; the two teams sharing information about each other’s projects; the fact they love BrainPOP; and how BrainPOP movies motivate them to learn even more.

~Tharaka Ranbadu, IT Manager

I was so thrilled to be invited to visit the Robotics club at PS 261. Having very little knowledge on robotics, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was blown away by how smart and enthusiastic the kids were about their project. There was so much excitement (and quite a bit of yelling) in that classroom as they worked together to complete the “missions” by programming the robot. The details of programming the robot were a bit over my head, but it was refreshing to see such an inspired and eager group of students work together as they prepared for this weekend’s big competition. Working more behind the scenes at BrainPOP, I don’t often get to talk to students about our sites, or see what they’re doing in the classroom, but it was so encouraging to see their eyes light up when asked about BrainPOP, and to hear how they used our movie on Diabetes as a starting point for the research aspect of their project. It was a great experience to not only hear the students talk first-hand about enjoying BrainPOP, but also to see their  dedication to this after-school team project.

~ Lisa Subrizi, District Relations Associate

My role as District Relations Manager really only allows me to work with teachers and administrators.  Having the opportunity to see students using our movies and content to bolster their after-school activities was amazing.  I really enjoyed listening to the research team discuss how they utilized our content on Diabetes to interview people living with Type 1 and 2 Diabetes.  The research team also used our content to create a paper that included those interviews and recipes that would allow people with Diabetes to decrease their dependency on insulin shots.  My other fond memory was watching the students work with the LEGO robots they created to do activities related to agriculture and food production.  I know that I work for a great company and have met a number of teachers who have reiterated that but it was really wonderful to see the effect BrainPOP has on students who have it at their school.

~ Alicia Cooper, Manager, District Relations

Learn more about New York City / New Jersey FIRST , a non-profit organization created to inspire youth to pursue further studies and careers in science and technology and to help students acquire the knowledge and skills needed to compete in the technologically-driven global economy. For more on the LEGO League Challenge, click here.

You may not realize it, but by turning to BrainPOP’s content, you’re playing a role in improving teaching and learning through technology. And that quest for teaching and learning improvement is exactly what inspired Digital Learning Day, taking place today across the country. Digital Learning Day marks the culmination of a year-long national awareness campaign by the policy/advocacy organization Alliance for Excellent Education, which is dedicated to helping students succeed in school and beyond.  Hundreds of thousands of students and teachers are currently signed up to participate, and there’s time for you to jump in as well. Start a conversation, share perspectives, and exchange your ideas. Schools across the U.S. will interact live during a virtual National Town Hall Meeting [time?] that spotlights innovative teachers and creative projects. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joins FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski for a special appearance. There’s also a daylong webcast [start/finish time?] that showcases the myriad ways digital tools are being used in real classrooms. As a trusted provider of digital content, we wanted to show our support for Digital Learning Day.  To that end, we’ve designated Blogs as today’s Featured Movie.  Blogs – a truly 21^st-century medium that fosters the same kind of collaboration and conversation Digital Learning Day does – struck us as the perfect topic for this occasion.

Interested in showing your support? Think about a time when you embraced a new digital learning tool, then share your story, either here in our user forums or at DigitalLearningDay.org.

Dr. Kari Stubbs, Vice President of 21^st Century Learning, joined 100 people from 20 countries to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the Horizon Report at an alumnae board retreat last week. She represented BrainPOP on the board for the 2010 and 2011 K12 reports.

With well over one million downloads and 27 translations in the past ten years, the NMC Horizon Report series provides a key strategic technology planning tool. To follow the live conversation from the event, search for the hashtag #nmchz on twitter. David Sibbet, the world’s leading visual facilitator, facilitated the event, where participants developed a set of recommendations and insights that will inform a major 30-to-40-page publication that is the key outcome of the retreat.

How do you take advantage of the Horizon K12 report to facilitate your district’s technology planning?

FETC was held January 23-26, 2012.

With the close of the 2012 FETC Conference in Orlando, Florida, we want to thank those of you who came out to see us.  It’s always exciting to connect with our supporters and hear about your experiences with BrainPOP.  Even Moby had a blast!

Speaking of Moby, Wade Werner, K-4 computer teacher at G.F.W. Elementary School in Gibbon, MN, had the lucky fortune of catching up with him at the conference.  Talk about being in the right place at the right time!  With his iPad in hand, Wade was able to officially introduce our favorite robot to his students back in Minnesota through FaceTime.  They had never seen him before, but after showing off his smooth dance moves, Moby was an instant hit with the kindergarten class.

Moby has Wade hooked, too!  With plans to start using BrainPOP at school, he informed his class they’d be seeing a lot more of Moby in the near future.  Their reaction was a definite reassurance of Moby’s celebrity status!

Are you a fan of Moby’s, too?  Be sure to visit our conference page to see where we’re headed next.