Posts on “ student-made projects ”

Last Friday, I had the honor of being one of the judges for the the Rube Goldberg Machines Boss Level at NYC’s Quest 2to Learn School. With all of debate surrounding assessment, it was refreshing to witness a unique approach to middle school finals (or as Quest to Learn refers to them with a kid-friendly nod, “boss levels”). A “Rube Goldberg machine” is a device that’s designed to complete a simple task in a complex fashion. For this challenge, 6th-graders teamed up to create simple machines that served different purposes – one created art using paint, another lifted a tissue out of a tissue box. In order to complete their boss levels, these 6th graders had to design a solution to complete the tasks that they were assigned. Beyond the curricular content students had to apply, they were collaboratively problem solving, planning, testing, and iterating as a team in order to complete this challenge — a very accurate set of real life skills that we employ regularly at BrainPOP.  We visited six classrooms and assessed the completed projects using rubrics, providing authentic feedback to the students from a variety of professions represented by the judging panel. Upon entering each classroom, the excitement of… Read the Rest»

Guest blogger Laura Gatto shares a delightful story of preparing her son to handle the anxiety of air travel with BrainPOP! In the week leading up to spring break, my 6-year-old son was super excited about our upcoming vacation to DisneyWorld. He also seemed a little nervous about the plane ride, so I thought it would be a good idea to watch a BrainPOP movie on FLIGHT. Perhaps it would help reduce his anxiety, at the very least it could reduce mine! So, in the brief window of time between preparing his school lunch and getting him out the door to catch the bus, we watched the movie and took the quiz together. Though our time was limited, we delved into the mechanics of movement with physics concepts like weight, drag, lift and thrust. Though he didn’t understand everything, he was interested, curious and excited! Later, I thought about our tendency to hold back teaching children certain “difficult” subjects even when we notice their excitement and interest. I stumbled upon some of my college notes from the writings of renowned cognitive psychologist, Jerome Bruner and was reminded that the foundations of any subject can be taught to anyone, at any… Read the Rest»

On February 13th, BrainPOP was thrilled to host student leaders from Global Kids and Mouse Squad for a “serious game jam” at BrainPOP Headquarters.  During the 2 hour event, student leaders from Global Kids led a “grow a game” activity that encouraging their peers to consider the role of values in the games they know and love.  Next, in small groups, students playtested and manipulated “Buckets” a new categorization and relationship assessment game that we’re developing here at BrainPOP. The student input was phenomenal, they provided all sorts of creative ideas for how to change the mechanics, data and interface to make the game more fun, effective and useful for the classroom. At BrainPOP we host events like this for a number of reasons.  First of all it’s wonderful to provide opportunity for students to learn about the process of game design from professionals in the field.  Second it’s great for our designers at BrianPOP to get authentic feedback and suggestions directly from the most important members of our audience: students! You can’t build a successful game without concrete feedback from your audience.   Finally, it’s through events like this that connect students, teachers, parents, and professionals with shared interests… Read the Rest»

Inspired by the Educate to Innovate Campaign, President Obama’s initiative to promote a renewed focus on STEM education, the National STEM Video Game Challenge is a multi-year competition whose goal is to motivate interest in STEM learning among America’s youth by tapping into students’ natural passion for playing and making video games. CALLING ALL TEACHERS with STUDENT GAMERS!  ENCOURAGE your students to ENTER THE CHALLENGE! BrainPOP is once again a proud outreach partner for the challenge and our site is a terrific starting place for you to prepare your students to participate.  Use our STEM Spotlight to introduce key concepts that might inspire your students as entry points for developing game content. In addition, check out GameUp for examples of STEM-based educational games and begin thinking about turning content knowledge into games.  We’ve got lesson plans to help get you up and running, or listen to a webinar and read our blog posts that can help you consider the best ways to bring game design into your classroom.    

Guest Blogger and BrainPOP Educator Steve Isaacs share his methods for incorporating game design into his classroom.  You can find the post in it’s original form on Steve’s blog, games and learning Recently @techucation reached out to ask for some resources and ideas related to teaching Video Game Design and Development.  I responded to his inquiry and realized it would serve as a worthwhile blog post to share with the educational community.  Below is a general description of my 7th and 8th grade courses.  In 7th grade, I teach a six week introduction to video game design and digital storytelling.  In 8th grade I teach a full semester course in video game design and development.  I have also developed and teach the full semester course as an online high school course for The VHS Collaborative (http://thevhscollaborative.org/).  I hope you find the information helpful as I would love to see more courses evolve that teach important 21st century skills through game design. Currently, I am enrolled in the doctoral program in Educational Technology at Boise State University and the focus of my research is the pedagogical benefits of game design and development.  Some of the concepts I find most worthwhile to research… Read the Rest»

Every wonder what the BrainPOP headquarters look like? So did the students in BrainPOP Educator Lisa Parisi’s 4th grade class and last week they got the opportunity to visit and find out! Students toured the office space, met with some animators, and observed all the hardworking BrainPOP staff working away at their jobs.  When the class returned to Denton Ave school, Lisa game them the following blog assignment: “Today, we had the unique opportunity to visit the BrainPop Headquarters in NYC. While there, we got to see how they create movies. We also got to share our ideas for new movies. It was a very enlightening trip for all of us. Share what you learned today. Talk about how movies are made. Or maybe about what you were surprised about. How about telling us the highlights of the trip? Perhaps you were inspired to try something on your own. Let us know what inspired you. Be sure to include: Your favorite part of the trip Your most surprising part of the trip Great language Excellent editing A fantastic grabber and a thought-provoking conclusion Have fun with this blog! It will be your last one of the year! Lisa believes that… Read the Rest»

Guest Bloggers and BrainPOP Educators Eliza Chung and Jan Bird worked with students from class 1a at The School at Columbia to create their own BrainPOP style movie about raising baby chicks. Here at BrainPOP Educators, we were thrilled to Skype with their students and help create the parameters for the awesome project. Eliza writes: “We wanted our first grade students to show their learning about writing procedural text in a creative manner. We’d been watching BrainPop Jr. videos all year long when they’ve connected with our curriculum, so the kids were familiar with the format and characters. When we Skyped with Andrew, from BrainPOP Educators, he asked us to create content about the changes involved with chicks and how to care for them, (which “coincidentally” was what we’d studied in our classroom). The kids were excited to make a movie for BrainPOP and be famous! They loved knowing other children would learn from what they could share. We brainstormed important knowledge we would need to include in the movie, and kids took charge of various aspects: the backgrounds, characters, and props. We wrote a script together, and each student had a part. They especially enjoyed drawing inspiration from the… Read the Rest»

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»

Jaclyn McLaren is a 6th grade Earth Science teacher at Webb Bridge Middle School in Alpharetta, GA. I have been teaching 6th Grade Earth Science for six years and we have been able to use BrainPOP, thanks to a PTA grant, for the past five years at my school.   The teachers at my school use the resources on a daily basis.  BrainPOP brings an innovative educational experience to our classrooms where the students look forward to learning in this creative way.  They enthusiastically focus on the fresh new ideas offered during these movies and continue on to the final questions with much anticipation. This year though I wanted to do something different as a test review.  I was thinking how I could incorporate BrainPOP into my classroom.  Then it came to me, I would have students create their own videos on topics taught in class.  The students would get in groups and I would assign them each a different topic discussed over the school year.  I decided to incorporate this idea for use as a year end review.  The students overwhelmingly agreed how exciting it would be to create their own videos on topics taught in the class.  They formed… 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»