Posts on “ featured teachers ”

8th Grade Science teacher, guest blogger, and superstar BrainPOP Educator Rachael Tarshes joined the BrainPOP team in San Diego to share her strategies for game-based learning at the ISTE Playground.  As a follow-up to her earlier blog post, below she shares her reflection on her experience at the conference. ISTE was a whirlwind 3 days of tips, tricks, ideas, and collaborating with teachers and students that words cannot easily describe. In all, I am so glad that I had the opportunity to bring my students to the ISTE Playground to talk about the work that we did in our class!  I knew that the experience of gaming in the classroom would be beneficial to my students despite the short time we had to work on it and my resolve to incorporate more games into my instruction next year was solidified by listening to my students tell other professional educators about their experiences.  Hearing one student describe the forces and motion principles involved in her favorite game, Coaster Creator, over 6 months after we learned them in the classroom was amazing! When we started this project, most of my students thought that gaming would be a huge distraction but in the… Read the Rest»

With all the hoopla about virtual experiences, there is still nothing like a real life, in person, field trip.  On May 31st, students from BrainPOP Educator Elizabeth Gitzen’s 5th grade class were welcomed to the the offices of JASONlive in Ashburn VA. The event?   A live webcast with NASA Systems Engineer Tracy Drain.  During the webcast, students from all around the world sent in questions and participated through interactive polling.  However, the 20 students in Ms. Gitzen’s class watched from the JASONlive screening room, just down the hall from the production studio.  After the webcast, Tracy and Patty, the host, joined the class for a personal Q&A, and students took a behind the scenes tour of the studio.  It was Interesting to not only hear the life and story of a successful NASA systems engineer,  but to visit the studio and observe the effort and planning that goes into creating such a substantial production.  We saw outlines, scripts, green screens, and computers displaying pre-recorded video questions and interactive polls. The event is archived and available at the JASONlive website, after viewing you may want to learn more about Jupiter and the projects Tracy is involved with.  Take a look at our… Read the Rest»

Wednesday, May 23 7:30PM ET: Video Games in Teaching – Lessons Learned Join Marjee Chmiel, instructional technology specialist at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, VA and a former game designer, as she shares tried and tested tips for successfully integrating video games into classrooms. You’ll walk away with practical ideas for where to find quality online games, a solid understanding of the value and drawback of games, tips for evaluating games, and ideas for assessment.  

We’re thrilled to release the newest addition to the series of video case studies put out with our partners at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. In this video, Steve Isaacs, a Technology Instructor at William Annin Middle School in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, shares how he integrates video game design and development into his 7th grade curriculum.  Steve’s emphasis on the design process helps students develop essential 21st century skills, while sparking students’ interest and motivation through the use of a medium they are passionate about. Using game design programs such as Gamestar Mechanic and Gamemaker enable this teacher to embed essential programming skills into a unit of study that also has an authentic purpose — his students are creating games to enter in the 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge! The winners of this exciting competition will be announced at The Atlantic’s Technologies and Education Forum on Tuesday, May 22, 2012.  You can read more about how Steve Isaacs prepared his students to enter their original video games in the National STEM Video Game Challenge here. We’re super-proud of this BrainPOP Educator! Read more about his work. Or, read the study itself, including a survey of more than 500 K-8 teachers who document their… Read the Rest»

BrainPOP Educator Amber Gross recently submitted a lesson plan with an amazing set of graphic organizers she created to facilitate student thinking before, during, and after BrainPOP Jr. movies. We were so impressed with the work she did on these organizers that we asked her to submit a guest blog post and tell more about how she uses them. Amber also shares two more versions of this graphic organizer set for other BrainPOP Jr. topics. It’s a teaching truth: There’s always a big pay off when you take the time to frontload a lesson.  If only there was a tool to engage students, introduce key vocabulary, activate prior knowledge, and build background knowledge…oh, hello there, BrainPOP! My students can’t get enough BrainPOP Jr. (and neither can I)!  We use the videos daily at the beginning of our lessons.  Some of my students (English Language Learners, special education students, Early Intervention Program students, and regular education students) need a little scaffolding to help them focus on the most important information, so I created a few organizers to use before, during, and after watching the videos.  Each organizer includes Key Vocabulary, Before and After Video Questions, Challenge Questions, and video images. The… Read the Rest»

Guest Blogger and BrainPOP Educator Julia Curtis-Burnes is a New York State certified and licensed educator. She received her Master’s Degree in Teaching from Brown University in 2008 and has a four year educational background working with students in grades k-12. Julia is currently working towards developing leadership programs that help students build skills to become good public speakers, strong writers, selective college applicants and successful college students. Last month, I attended the Celebration of Teaching and Learning Conference in New York City on to provide my perspective as an educator who uses Brainpop as a teaching tool. During the conference I worked at a booth with the BrainPOP team, taking turns helping everyone who came by.  I greatly enjoyed helping teachers learn more about how to use BrainPOP as a resource to empower them and their students in the classroom. The conference gave me the opportunity to showcase my ideas and share my specific pointers about BrainPOP. There were so many teachers who came to the booth raving about what they loved about BrainPOP, However, one of the most common issues teachers shared was that the information in BrainPOP  was presented too quickly. Indeed, BrainPOP movies are short but packed with content and I struggled with… Read the Rest»

Last week, BrainPOP had the pleasure to attend the Mobile Learning Experience a small 3 day conference sponsored by Arizona K12 Center at Arizona State University. The 350 attendees were treated to inspiring and enlightening keynote talks about the future of education, the promises and shortcomings of mobile devices and some deep thoughts about disruption of the current system.   At the breakout sessions we were particularly excited to meet some of our BrainPOP Educators friends, specifically @bettyannf, who presented on using iPads in her PE and Science integrated lessons. You can read more about her experiences and see her kids in action a blog entry we published last week.  We also met college student Travis Allen and the fascinating and inspiring leadership team of the ischool initiative. ischool is quite literally taking learning mobile, as they prepare to tour cross country this summer and spread the word about the power of mobility from the ischool bus! Tech integrator Lisa Johnson shared her free app aggregator, Techchef4u a must have (and free) app sorter designed for educators by educators.   Check out her pinterest page too, with lots of great visual ideas for mobile learning activities. Conference planner Tony Vincent and professor Jackie Gerstein shared amazing… Read the Rest»

Guest Blogger Betty Ann Fish is the Chair of the Physical Education Department at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy and has been teaching and coaching for 24 years. Currently she teaches at the elementary school level and coaches at the middle and upper school level. She has presented at ISTE, BLC08, BLC10, PSAHPERD 2010, EduCon 2.3 and many other conferences. Betty sent us this video and shared:     During physical education class students participate in the heart adventure challenge course.  They pretend to be the blood circulating through the heart.  The right side is blue because there is no oxygen then they go to the lungs and pick up oxygen, return to the heart on the red side and travel through the aorta.  When they exit the aorta they either go to the brain or other body parts.  When they exited the brain they picked up an iPad and watched BrainPOP’s heart movie.  The movie reinforced the concepts they were learning and presented the heart in a different visual manner. The students love BrainPOP and we do to!  

Guest Blogger Brian M. Adams teaches at Copeland Middle School in Rockaway, NJ. He is caretaker of historyknowledge.com. He is a certified nerd and has no relation to the Canadian rock star.   As a history teacher, review of civics is a must.  In searching for new means of doing so and trying to find a different place to start, I checked with some old friends, Tim and Moby.  At the bottom of the BrainPOP site, I saw an icon for GameUp.  I found a link to Executive Command and I was set.   All my classes met in the computer lab one day.  My goal was for the students to better understand what the jobs and duties of the president.  The students brainstormed previously learned information and after that they logged on to the game.  I gave the students no instruction on how to play, what were the goals or how to score points.   I gave them a sheet which asked four questions: How do you earn points? How do you lose points? What roles do you fill as president?  (Create a list) What conclusions can you make about serving as president?   The assignment led to great… Read the Rest»

Wednesday, March 28 4:30PM ET: Play Seriously: The MIT Education Arcade Digital games in class? You bet! Scot Osterweil, Creative Director of the MIT Education Arcade, hosts this webinar on the role of gaming in classroom instruction. Discover how you can use our newest math games – a Lure of the Labyrinth trio – to enhance your lessons and excite students.