Posts on “ STEM ”

Now that the school year is in full swing, remember to check out the BrainPOP Spotlight on Digital Citizenship.  More than ever, classrooms are going digital, and it’s our job as teachers to help students understand appropriate online behavior and the importance of interacting respectfully. From Copyright and Plagiarism to Cyberbullying and Internet Search, the Digital Citizen Spotlight provides a collection of useful content to help students understand their role as digital citizens.  A thorough exploration of the Spotlight page can provide a roadmap for navigating the wild, wild world of the web.  Your students will learn a lot, and you will too! Once you’ve explored the Spotlight page and clicked through to its specific topics,  be sure to visit each “Lesson Plans and Teaching Ideas” page.  These pages feature topic-specific lesson plans, graphic organizers, movies, and quizzes that you can customize and remix to use with your own students. After exploring the Digital Citizenship Spotlight, topics, and teaching resources,  put your refreshed digital etiquette skills to use and share your ideas in our community forum.  It’s a great place to meet fellow members of the BrainPOP Educators community and make your voice heard!  

Globaloria, established by the World Wide Workshop, is a program that teaches students how to create web-based educational games and interactive simulations.  Each year, the program hosts the Globeys, a game design competition in which hundreds of Globaloria students participate.  Celebrating excellence in the game design process, the Globeys are launched in the fall, giving students most of the school year to work on their projects before the spring submission deadline. On August 10th, Globaloria proudly announced the names of the following West Virginia STEM and Civics Globey winners, as well as the Educator Inspiration Award winners. WV STEM Globey Winner: Power Supply, by Dylan Sturgeon WV Civics Globey Winners: Cause and Effect the Daniel Calwell, Story, by Caitlin Moore & Austin Susman Globaloria Educator Award Winners: Nyssa Arcos Evans (Best Returning Educator) and Diane White (Best Educator Mentor) These winners were recognized for their hard work and creativity at the special Globey Award ceremony in Charleston, WV and received certificates, awards, and prizes, including subscriptions to BrainPOP.  Congratulations!  

Dr. Kari Stubbs, Vice President of 21st Century Learning, is heading west to Redmond, WA to visit the Microsoft Headquarters for the 2012 Partners in Learning US Forum.  This BrainPOP-sponsored event will take place July 31-August 1 and is an exciting, professional learning experience that spotlights and allows superstar educators from all over the US to share their innovative teaching expertise.  As a keynote featured speaker, Kari will have the honor of addressing 102 amazing educators from 25 states.  Additionally, she’ll be hosting Got Game?,  a BYOL session that focuses on educational games, at which attendees will have the opportunity to explore video case studies and play some quality STEM, Social Studies, and Health games.  If you’re one of the lucky Forum attendees, be sure to visit Kari in the exhibitor space to learn more about BrainPOP and our GameUp games.  

Last week, President Obama announced plans for a national corps group to recognize and reward leading teachers in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) areas.  Recognizing the importance for America’s future within the global workforce Obama said, “we need to make sure our children are getting the best education possible.  Teachers matter, and great teachers deserve our support.” Furthermore many argue that educating students in these fields is important for longterm financial and economic interests of the country as well. Some noteworthy points in the announcement?  The goal is to prepare over 100,000 additional STEM teachers over the next decade.  The federal government is willing to compensate leaders in the initiative and, to do this,  has requested 1 billion dollars in the 2013 budget!  They are dedicating $100 million of the current budget to this initiative immediately. To read more about the announcement, check out the official press release. To view BrainPOP STEM resources, be sure to check out our STEM spotlight page with topics galore to help students build understanding.  In addition,  utilize the new Science and Math related games featured on GameUp, as another useful resource that students love.

The world lost a true pioneer yesterday.  Sally Ride, who flew through space in 1983 died of pancreatic cancer.  Though most well known as an astronaut, watch the BrainPOP animation to learn more about this dynamic and brilliant woman. Today we honor Ms. Ride by featuring her biographical animation for all to see.

8th Grade Science teacher, guest blogger and  superstar BrainPOP Educator Rachael Tarshes had some creative strategies for introducing game based learning in her classroom this year! Read about her strategies below, or better yet, if you’re attending the ISTE conference in San Diego, check out her students’ presentation at the ISTE playground on the morning of Monday June 25th. It wasn’t until March of this year that I was made aware of the new roll out at BrainPOP – online games! GameUP currently offers games in Math, Health, Science, and History all for free and linked to BrainPOP videos and lesson plans. At the end of the school year, I was ready to start incorporating games into my science class but I had to figure out a way to make it engaging.  I decided to get a little creative. My goal was to give my students the time and opportunity to play and evaluate some of the science games. This would help me decide which games to incorporate into my 8th grade instruction and which ones to highlight to the other grade-level science teachers for their potential use as well. Taking a hint from Tim and Moby, I started this… Read the Rest»

BrainPOP Educators is spreading the love and you can now find some of our quality lesson plans on the HP Teacher Experience Exchange.  Much like BrainPOP Educators, the Teacher Experience Exchange is a free online community for teachers where they can interact with fellow educators, create and share lesson plans, enroll in courses, and more.   This month, the Exchange is highlighting STEM education and we’re honored that they have identified BrainPOP as a valuable resource for supporting STEM-based games and learning. Visit the Exchange to read what they’re saying about the benefits of using BrainPOP’s GameUp games in the classroom.  We’ve selected several of our best game-based lesson plans to share with the HP community and we’d like to encourage you to head on over and see what we’ve included.  From Flower Power to Executive Command, you’ll find lessons featuring our GameUp games in many curriculum areas.  

Since last June, when BrainPOP’s GameUP network offically launched, learners have logged hundreds of thousands of hours playing educational games on our site! With the excitement and interest in our games, BrainPOPpers are constantly attending and presenting at conferences.  This week we’re going to be at at the Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Conference 8.0 in Madison, WI.   Karina Linch, Senior VP of Product Management, will join a panel covering “Internet Scale Experimental Design and Deployment for Educational Games Using BrainPOP.” She’ll be joined by John Stamper, Derek Lomas, Steve Ritter, and Dixie Ching of the Playpower Foundation, a GameUp partner. Karina will also present with Allisyn Levy, Senior Director of Educator Experience, and Sam Potasznik, one of our game developers, on GameUp and the BrainPOP game Food Fight. Educators Production Consultant Tanner Vea presents his take on location based Augmented Reality games , and Instructional Designer Will Jordan-Cooley will present a paper on Greenify and game based aspects of Climate Change in adult education. By attending and presenting at academic conferences, BrainPOP stays on top of the latest research and developments in innovative teaching practice.  The lessons we learn go right into building the best resource for your students!  

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»

Today, we’re down in Loudoun Virginia joining a group of students (and beloved BrainPOP Advisor Adina Popa) for a special “behind-the-scenes” experience at The JASON Project studio during today’s JASON live event webcast with NASA Systems Engineer Tracy Drain! After watching the 10:30am live events from a viewing room, we will have an opportunity to see how JASON’s Live Events are produced and distributed, check out the 3-camera green screen studio and the control room where the program is directed and switched. Most excitingly, we will meet our guest expert Tracy Drain and JASON Live’s program host, Patty Kim, in person and some of the JASON production team members that make it all happen! Tracy and Patty will host a special 20-minute Q&A session with the class.  Please follow along our livetweeting with the BrainPOP Though you can’t be with us at the studio, you can still join us for any of the four live events with Tracy at 10:30am, 1:30pm, 4:30pm, and 6:30pm Eastern. Each program will last approximately 45 minutes. You’ll have a chance to learn the physics that Tracy has had to master to succeed in her job, find out about the career path she followed to become a mechanical engineer, ask her questions,… Read the Rest»