Posts on “ student-made projects ”

Game nights have been bringing people together for generations, and recently BrainPOP collaborated with our friends from YouPD to host our very own!  The evening included game play, of course, and presentations from NewVisions, the MIT Education Arcade and Global Kids, to more than 50 teachers, administrators, non-profits employees. First,  Scot Osterweil, Creative Director at the MIT Education Arcade, shared how play is at the root of human nature and learning, yet it’s not honored within the US educational system.  He continued by describing how play is at the root of many well designed educational games including his own Lure of the Labyrinth which we played collaboratively with the entire group! Grand Theft Calculus it was not Next Barry Joseph, Online Leadership Director at Global Kids,  along with two youth leaders, Ednica and Kendell,  presented on the process of designing games in their after school class, specifically “Playing for Peace” with Gamestar Mechanic.   They are currently challenging young game designers to create games with social impact about the causes and effects of war around the world.  Get your students involved by clicking the link above. Next Hsing Wei from NewVisions showed off Hackasaurus from Mozilla, demonstrating how the thoughtful “x-ray goggles”… Read the Rest»

BrainPOP Educators Brennan Plummer, Jarrod Stephens and Brian Cook at Worthington Elementary School in Kentucky lead a Student Technology Leadership Program for aspiring technologists! Brennan contacted us to share about their most recent research projects on Steve Jobs and QR codes. One component of this research project was the creation of BrainPOP videos – complete with Tim, Moby, sharp dialogue and a pointed question. Jarrod shares that the project took about 2 weeks, “After completing the scripts and storyboards, there were countless hours of rehearsing and recording. There were lots of laughs.” He continues, “the most surprising element of the project was to see how engaged the kids became!  They were in my room every day to ask about when they could come in and work. Most of the work was completed after school hours and both the boys and girls who took part in the project loved taking turns being Moby.”  Take a look at the fruits of their labor, and if you’ve made some awesome BrainPOP projects with your students, please share with us! Congratulations to the STLP students at Worthington! What is a Steve Jobs?   What is a Steve Jobs? from Brennan Plummer on Vimeo. What is a… Read the Rest»

Last week we published a new lesson plan on writing a BrainPOP script with students.  BrainPOP Educator @ktitraci read about it and shared this amazing example of BrianPOP scriptwriting and moviemaking with her first graders!  Enjoy the video, all about the iPod, and if you have BrainPOP videos that you’ve made with your students please share with us in the educator community!  

I had the good fortune of being invited to judge the Rube Goldberg Machines Challenge at the amazing and innovative Quest to Learn School. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the term, 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 opened a locker, another threw an object into the garbage. We visited seven classrooms and assessed the completed projects using rubrics. All the students did an outstanding job of demonstrating their knowledge of simple machines, kinetic and potential energy, and teamwork! I loved the way the students and their families responded to BrainPOP (thanks for the cheers!), and it was such an honor to serve as a judge alongside folks from Gigantic Mechanic and the New York Hall of Science, among others. Our service as judges included the spirited awards ceremony, where the winners of Best Overall Machine and Most Creative Machine were announced.  Thanks for including us, Quest to Learn!

Ahh,  the weeks before holiday break:  sentiments of joy and unrestrained excitement compete with the realities of extreme distraction and stress.  In other words, it’s hard to get a lot done!  At BrainPOP, we recognize this and we want to help you get through to the promised land: winter break. How about a little creative BrainPOP art project? Take a look at BrainPOP Educator’s exclusive BrainPOP holiday clip art collection. Load them into your IWB software and tell a winter tale, print ‘em out and have your students make a collage, use them for holiday sight words flashcards, make holiday cards! Using your imagination, there is no limit to what you and your students can do!  We’ve just activated a new feature to upload photographs, and we’re excited to see what you and your students come up with!  So get to work, snap a photo (or save the file with a .jpg or .gif extension),  and share with the community at BrainPOP Educators.  We can’t wait to see what you do!

Multimedia and animation teacher Chris Murphy from Newton Massachusetts, shares his experience with BrainPOP animator Amber Alvarez’s virtual visit to his animation class.  By bringing an animation expert into class, Chris connected with BrainPOP in a whole new way! I appreciate BrainPOP’s help with my Interactive Multimedia class. A few weeks ago,  we arranged a guest appearance via Skype with Amber Alvarez- one of the animators. She was extremely enthusiastic and knowledgable as she explained how to synchronize a voice with various mouth shapes. She clearly explained the use of graphic symbols in Macromedia Flash and how they are used for synchronization. Amber’s enthusiasm was contagious. Right after our virtual meeting, my students couldn’t wait to try this new technique.  I know my student’s will do their best work because they know that a professional animator from BrainPOP gave them guidance. I’m certain that our virtual meeting with Amber will be the highlight of the year for my students.   Thanks for sharing Chris, we look forward to seeing your students’ work!

Here at BrainPOP we strive to keep our content current, relevant and consistently engaging.   We work with content experts and advisors to assure the videos and interactive features meet your expectations.  This week we introduce our newest advisor: Esther Wojcicki.  Esther’s impressive list of accomplishments include: founder of Palo Alto High’s Journalism program, chair at Learning Matters and vice chair at Creative Commons not to mention frequent contributer at the Huffington Post and consultant for the Carnegie Foundation.  With these experiences, she brings insight to the development of BrainPOP content in language arts, journalism and social studies. Esther enjoys BrainPOP because the “videos are easy to use, divided into logical categories, short but not too short and cover the material in an interesting way.” Also, working closely with students in journalism courses, she explains, “kids are expected to do some research themselves, find the information themselves and collaborate with their peers.  BrainPOP fits well into this new paradigm since kids can easily watch a variety of videos on their own and then join their group to share new information. Alternatively, they can watch together and then create some kind of project based on the new information they learned.”  Frequent readers… Read the Rest»

Navigating the Writing Process with Kerpoof and BrainPOP Wednesday, October 19 6:30 PM EDT Duration: 1 Hour Teaching writing skills can be a challenge for many teachers. But in this webinar, Devren Hobbs, Education Manager at Kerpoof, and Jessica Storer, Manager of Education Outreach at BrainPOP, show you that it doesn’t have to be that way. They’ll demonstrate how easy it is to use Kerpoof and BrainPOP to bring digital storytelling into your curriculum. Devren and Jessica will cover some of the creative and engaging ways you can help students brainstorm, compose and publish stories online, and reinforce their writing skills overall. Take home a whole new batch of strategies for writing instruction.

Guest Blogger Mary Alice Panek of the Pembroke School District helped her students make their own BrainPOP movie about the Statue of Liberty.  She shares her story in this guest blog post. My grade 4 students beg for Tim and Moby.  When I asked them about making our own BrainPOP movie, they exploded with chatter and ideas! I put up several pieces of poster paper and we started to brain storm all things BrainPOP.  Every student approved our final topic: The Statue of Liberty.  I wrote their ideas down quickly, organizing and adding and building the vision! The future movie makers watched several BrainPOP videos to get a sense of sequence.  They formed committees and began researching our topic.  We learned about proper use of the computer programs and how to give credits for the photography we used.  Our library’s media specialist played an important part of this learning! Once we had a plan and the research was complete, students began scripting.  There was plenty of discussion as to what had to be in our video and what could be left out. It was a delicate discussion as those whose perspectives were not chosen had to understand why. It was… Read the Rest»

What do you get when you combine creativity, good humor, and an interest in educational technology? The beginnings of a great comic strip or cartoon for the ISTE Daily Leader! ISTE welcomes all kids and adults to submit a comic or cartoon for possible showcasing in their newspaper of record during the annual ISTE conference in Philadelphia, June 26-29. The scoop: *Create a comic displaying something funny about technology in education or the ISTE conference *Single panel or up to 3 panels, must fit within the 8th page (4.75 in W X 3.4 in H) *Appropriate for an audience of all ages *Include name, age, location (institution, city, state/province, and country) and technology used (if any) *Submit as a high-resolution PDF or jpg at 300 dpi *Must be original and not previously published To be considered, entries must be submitted via email to Editor Kate Conley, kconley@iste.org by June 3, 2011. For full details, click here. Want to get your students involved but not sure where to start? Use BrainPOP topics like Traditional Animation, Dialogue, and Drawing to build background knowledge.  Explore BrainPOP Jr.’s Belly Up and BrainPOP’s FYI comics for ideas and examples, you’ll find one cheeky comic with each… Read the Rest»