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The Digital Education Show Asia, co-organized by Terrapinn and MDeC, and supported by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education Malaysia, is a two day conference focusing on how educators can engage students with learning technologies. On May 27 and 28, educators from all over the world will be attending this conference in search of more effective ways to incorporate technology into their teaching.  The only event of its kind in Malaysia, the Digital Education Show Asia will bring together an abundance of presenters and attendees from corporations, ministries, and schools.  Included among the list of engaging presenters is BrainPOP’s Vice President of Learning and Innovation, Dr. Kari Stubbs, who is sure to deliver an inspiring session. Heading to the conference? Be sure to catch Kari’s keynote, Shifting Paradigms for Teaching and Learning, on May 27 at 2:30. Kari will be discussing student engagement and meaningful learning, and will focus on the role of technology in the new learning ecosystem. She’ll also cover systemic change and the power of common vocabulary with regard to technology in education. Follow along with the action via #digitaledu, @EducationInAsia, and @karistubbs.

Does your school have Google Apps for Education and a BrainPOP Jr. subscription? Well then, today’s your lucky day!  BrainPOP Jr. is now available in the Google Apps Marketplace and is designed to provide convenience of single sign on! School-wide BrainPOP Jr. subscribers who use Google Apps will no longer need to log in separately. After installing the free plug in, BrainPOP Jr. will appear listed in the “more” menu of each user’s Google account.   Teachers and students alike will appreciate the seamless school-wide access from Google Apps to BrainPOP Jr.®’s award-winning educational movies.   If you’re an administrator for the school’s Google Apps account, visit the Google Apps MarketPlace, and make the simple install.  If you’re not a administrator – find one and ask! We’d love to hear your feedback, so please share!

BrainPOP Webinar – 1-to-1 and Blended Learning: The Essentials Wednesday, May 22 at 3:30 pm ET  Join Common Sense Media and BrainPOP for a look at tools to help make 1-to-1 and blended learning realities in your classroom. Hear about Common Sense’s 1-to-1 Essentials, a comprehensive roadmap for schools integrating a tablet program. It covers everything, from engaging parents to digital citizenship to the best learning apps. We’ll also look at best practices for using BrainPOP’s apps in 1-to-1 and blended learning environments. Event Password: moby

“If you understand something in only one way, then you don’t really understand it at all. The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we’ve connected it to all other things we know.” – AI researcher Marvin Minsky Many of you may use the technique of visualizing or using metaphors to help remember peoples names, personal responsibilities or even your grocery list.  It’s a powerful way to learn.  You can actually strengthen the cognitive pathways associated with subject matter through making many connections to the material through many avenues.  A novice adult and a novice child have many similarities in processing and in instructional needs. Just think about how having the ability to follow hyperlinks as you are web-surfing has enriched your experience learning something new.  That cross-linking of content for multiple interpretations serves to deepen your understanding of whatever subject it is you are interested in. Learning through rote memorization is the opposite of learning through connections.  Rote memorization involves learning through repeated exposure.  That’s great for some things, but it rarely produces the kind of high order critical thinking skills that we associate with extraordinary mental abilities. At BrainPOP, we are hopeful our visual and engaging animations and games model… Read the Rest»

Announcing the GLS Playful Learning Summit! Are you an educator passionate or curious about game-based learning and digital media?  You are invited to register for the 2013 Games+Learning+Society Playful Learning Summit (formerly GLS Educators Symposium, or GLSES).  The inaugural Playful Learning Summit at the GLS 9.0 Conference will take place on Tuesday, June 11th at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Memorial Union from 8 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. Come Play: Keynote and Workshops The Playful Learning Summit will feature: A keynote address by Dani Herro, Assistant Professor for Digital Media and Learning at Clemson University.  Dani is a teacher educator with deep Wisconsin roots – she is the former Instructional Technology Administrator of Oconomowoc Schools and is a GLS alumna having earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2010.  The theme of her keynote address is “connected learning.” Over a dozen hands-on workshops relevant to educators across grade levels and content areas.  This year’s workshops will explore STEM education, digital storytelling, video game design, affinity spaces and literacy education, and the design of “gameful” classrooms, curricula, and experiences.  For educators interested in playful “low-tech” games, come learn about improvisation, engaging lessons through physical movement, and gaming for social justice…. Read the Rest»

Congratulations to GameUp partners Filament Games and Learning Games Network for their nominations in the “Best Gameplay” category at the annual Games for Change awards this June. LGN’s game,  Quandary, is a part of the GameUp game network and was the first title in our English Language Arts section.  In this popular game,  ”players shape the future of a new society while learning how to recognize ethical issues and deal with challenging situations in their own lives.”  By creating complex decision making situations in which players must weigh fact, opinion, trustworthiness and risk this title supports teaching toward many ELA common core state standards. Filament’s Game, Reach for the Sun has players,  ”help a young seedling grow and reproduce before winter approaches.” Though Reach for the Sun is not featured on GameUp, many other Filament games are, including:  You Make Me Sick, Cell Command, Crazy Plant Shop and The Sports Network 2.  Be sure to check out the Games For Change Blog for more information about all the nominated games. And may the best game win!

As Teacher Appreciation Week comes to a close, we hope that all of our educators are feeling the love and appreciation they deserve. Check out some of the stories of influential teachers from the BrainPOPpers below. Teachers, we appreciate you! In first grade, Ms. Wynn guided us to turn our classroom into a tropical rainforest, complete with paper mache birds and an enormous tree in the center. That room was magical, and her ability to get us all working together to build it was genius. Ahh, the progressive classrooms of 1982. . .how times have changed. -Andrew Gardner, Senior Manager, BrainPOP Educators Ms. Wolfskill was my seventh and eighth-grade speech and drama teacher at Burbank Middle School. She was able to take a bunch of inner-city kids and turn us into a drama geeks and wannabe Toastmasters. She taught us things like how to speak like newscasters, how to paint a mime face and how to get over our stage fright to perform for a very tough middle school audience. Most importantly she taught us to like ourselves as we were. Her influence is no doubt one of the reasons that I got into education. -Arturo Guajardo, District Relations Manager… Read the Rest»

We couldn’t help but share the final comments from the students at Middle Tennessee State University. We’re thrilled that the university’s Professor of Biology, Cindi Smith-Walters PhD, has introduced BrainPOP to so many of her students and it’s exciting to hear how their using BrainPOP on their own! BrainPOP has everything that a teacher would need to teach a lesson and learn something new along the way. Science is definitely my weak point, but BrainPOP has helpful videos and quizzes that are a good source of information and fun to watch at the same time. Throughout the semester, we had a couple of assignments that required us to use BrainPOP and I thought that it would be another one of those boring sites with more words than pictures, but that was not the case. I was surprised at how much there is to do on this site and I found it interesting to just search around on my own free time. I cannot wait to use this site in my classroom and to learn more from all the helpful videos and quizzes. It definitely gets a plus from me. -Jordan L. Littleton BrainPOP has been a fun and creative way for me… Read the Rest»

A playful, thoughtful professional development day at the BrainPOP office in Manhattan brought designers, educators and gamers together to discuss the future of educational gaming in classrooms across the country. Beginning with a presentation by Nick Fortugno of Playmatics, the New York-based group responsible for The Walking Dead: Dead Reckoning, two Breaking Bad titles, Lego City: On Patrol, Find the Future and Kingdom Keepers, we pondered how to tap into the high engagement potential and adaptable learning opportunities available within games. Noting the natural curiosity youngsters and adults alike tap into whilst exploring fictional game worlds (much like the PS3‘s adventure/art masterpiece and award magnet, Journey), Nick spoke to attendees about team loyalty and motivation through competition. Mastering in-game achievements requires skill, practice, patience and perseverance, just as learning standards in the classroom do, now defined by the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Unlike the sluggish turnaround time for multiple choice or open-ended test questions in school, games provide instant feedback to users so they may refine game-play strategy and persist. The lecture concluded with the group wondering how best to collaborate, given the rarity of serious gamer-turned-educators. Next up, BrainPOP’s Allisyn Levy introduced mathematics puzzler Lure of the Labyrinth:… Read the Rest»

Michael Baer’s passion for teaching mirrors his own passion for learning:  he delights in the thrill of a search, the celebration of a find, and the gift of bringing to light a discovery to share with others.  Widely recognized for his impact on education, Michael currently teaches Earth & Space science, Physics, and Physical Science at South Adams High School in northeast Indiana and is director of highly-acclaimed dots in blue water, a program “Making a World of Difference” by sending teachers and students to deliver student-developed water purifier systems to Haiti and beyond. As a career educator, I could not have received a greater compliment that this from my host teacher on a recent visit to Ukraine:  “A couple of days ago we had crazy time with two Americans who woke us up and made us to think positively” –Oleksandr Korotkov, English teacher at Specialized School of Foreign Languages in Sofiivska-Borshchagivka, a suburb of Ukraine’s capital city, Kiev. You see, I was one of those two teachers:  I was privileged to travel with Teachers for Global Classrooms (TGC) Program, an exchange and professional development opportunity for secondary school teachers sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and administered by the non-profit organization International Research & Exchanges… Read the Rest»