Posts on “ featured teachers ”

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»

With all the buzz at  BrainPOP about the STEM video game challenge and this week’s Global Education Conference, today we welcome Guest Blogger Laura Brown. Laura is an expatriate science teacher working in Shanghai at Concordia International School.  Recently selected as an Apple Distinguished Educator and  member of the Learning 2.0 Asia Technology Conference executive committee, Laura is passionate about sharing her experiences in using technology in the classroom and assisting other educators to explore its ability to enrich and deepen student learning for a more authentic understanding. Most people are well aware of the significant differences between western-style teaching methodologies and a traditional Chinese classroom. The large class sizes, lack of interactive and engaging learning activities, and the broadcast teaching approach, not only limits a student’s ability to think flexibly, it also does not fully meet all students learning styles and many are subsequently left behind. The Shanghai Education Bureau has recently observed trends that suggest, despite what many would think, the average Chinese student’s understanding of, and ability to apply scientific concepts, is lower than the equivalent age student studying in a western-style classroom. The Bureau has since established a program for International Collaborative Research on Using Multimedia… Read the Rest»

At BrainPOP we update the site with new movies, quizzes, games and teaching materials all the time.  To ensure that everything we release is of the highest quality, we call on our esteemed education advisors for their guidance and wisdom.  Today we welcome the newest member of our BrainPOP advisory board,  former Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Dr. Henry Adam.  Dr. Adam has an impressive bio that you can read here. BrainPOP educators recently contacted Dr. Adam to hear his thoughts about his newest appointment here at BrainPOP.  He writes, “As a pediatrician I’ve been trained to believe that prevention trumps treatment, and prevention of course depends on education. My work both as a clinician with patients and their families, and as an academic with students and house staff has largely been focused on education.  So joining BrainPOP seems natural for me.”  Well said doc! We are honored to have Dr. Adam join our board, and we look forward to receiving his guidance as we develop more health related content.

Several months ago, we found out that one of our favorite teachers, Michael Baer of the South Adams Schools in Berne, Indiana, was going to be in town. As BrainPOP’s physical science advisor for the past few years, Michael has been a valued member of the BrainPOP family, so we jumped at the chance to meet him in person. While we dined at a nearby restaurant, Michael gushed about his passion for teaching, and about his love of conveying to youngsters an excitement for science and for helping his fellow human beings. We already knew how inspirational Michael could be in his classes, but we were amazed when he told us of a project he’d spearheaded at his school that married science, humanitarianism—and BrainPOP! Even before the devastating earthquake that destroyed the Haitian capital of Port-au Prince in January 2010, many areas of Haiti were in dire need of clean water in the aftermath of three fierce hurricanes. One young girl, when asked if she understood that some children had died in the wake of the flooding, responded that yes, they were like “dots, in blue water.” So Michael and his students came up with a plan to devise a… Read the Rest»

Chris Carter’s saga with BrainPOP ESL in Germany continues with week 7… Day Thirty The exercises in BrainPOP ESL Level 2 require more reading and more fill in the blank activities.  We have to help Moby accomplish a goal by choosing the correct word to complete a sentence.  Since not all my first graders can read English with fluency quite yet, so I find myself reading for them.  First, I read the main sentence then the four to ten possible answers.  I think three is more than enough. So much for me being able to sneak into the background for a little covert observation!  I had been drifting to the back of the room to watch my class while they watched Ben and Moby.  A teacher sure can learn a lot about their class from the back of the room!  Student P was not very happy about the last time I did that.  She ended up with a time-out for not being able to keep her hands to herself. Day Thirty Two A visitor from BrainPOP ESL came to our school today.  I gave him a tour of the school.  It must have looked like we do nothing but BrainPOP!  (I… Read the Rest»

Chris Carter’s saga with BrainPOP ESL in Germany continues with week 6… Day Twenty Five What a day!  This morning started out with surprise treats brought in from one of my student’s parents to celebrate a birthday. Everyone filled their bellies with chocolate and other sweets, resulting in 20 kids on a serious sugar high at 9:00 in the morning. How did BrainPOP Jr. fit into today’s routine?  Well, it provided me with about 15 minutes of calm in the classroom.  This turned out to be just enough time for me to recompose and change my plans to better fit their manic energy. Day Twenty Six The sugar high seems to have continued, as my students were just as boisterous and giggly as yesterday.   Again, BrainPOP Jr. gave me a period of calm while the learning continued.  Of course I don’t want to use video, even interactive video, to sedate my students but I also don’t want to understate the peaceful beauty of a quiet and fully focused class.  I’m glad Moby had my back. Day Twenty Seven Ah, finally a semi-normal day.  We were on a roll, so decided to stick with BrainPOP Jr. again this morning.  This time… Read the Rest»

Kids need to relate to real life experiences to learn and as a teacher I strive to make those connections when introducing new concepts. This week in math we are working on conversion; learning the basics of converting gallons to quarts, to pints, to cups, and vice-versa. Before I even think about introducing the math involved, I want students to be “prepped” by building their background knowledge. So, we begin our introduction to the lesson with our class friends, Tim and Moby, from BrainPOP.   Together we watch the Customary Units movie and pause as needed to discuss. This adventure with Tim and Moby gives us solid mathematical information and a real life historical perspective; we learn that customary units are older than the metric system and that the U.S.A. never converted over from the older Imperial System. Students also learn that customary units were originally used in agriculture and trade, long before the metric system came into use. The information provided on measurement and volume activates their knowledge, so they are ready for the remainder of the lesson.   To provide reinforcement of what we just learned and to prepare students for the meat of the lesson where we… Read the Rest»

Edmodo + BrainPOP = Differentiating Instruction Wednesday, May 11, 2011 4:30 PM EST Duration: 1 Hour Special guest Paula Naugle, 4th-grade teacher at New Orleans’ Bissonet Plaza Elementary School, shows you how easy it can be to bring Edmodo and BrainPOP into your classroom. Put this pairing to work for you and meet all your students’ needs while you make learning more interesting! RSVP: http://edmodoandbrainpop.eventbrite.com/ *Please note – it can take up to 72 hours to receive a certificate after viewing a webinar and posting a comment. Please make sure educators@brainpop.com is not blocked from your spam filter.

Boy was I excited when my principal and media specialist announced that we finally purchased a BrainPOP subscription for our school. I jumped right in and started using the movies with my 4th graders in social studies. I am fortunate to have been awarded a $15,000 technology grant from my district that allowed me to get a tricked out 21st century classroom – a brand new Promethean board, a class set of Activotes, 15 wireless Dell net books with webcams, plus a whole lot more. Don’t be put off by that, anyone can use BrainPOP with just a computer. Having a computer connected to a projector allows for whole class viewing (which is all I had for years). Let me tell you about our classroom journey from whole group instruction to differentiated instruction with BrainPOP. For several weeks I did whole group instruction and showed all of my students how to login to BrainPOP and find a movie to correspond with our lessons. I would show the movies on the Promethean board, demonstrating how to change to full screen and how to turn on closed captioning (CC). I really love the CC feature, as many students grasp the information better… Read the Rest»

Wendy Gorton is a technology integrator at an American school in India, a Google Certified Teacher, and Google Apps EDU Certified Trainer. She enjoys integrating collaborative and innovative technologies in the classroom to help her students learn and share about the world with each other.  Find her to collaborate on www.twitter.com/wendygorton! I first saw Moby, not in the flesh, but most certainly in the plush, roaming around the halls of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) annual conference in Denver last year. I was immediately transported back to the memory of my first walk down Main Street in Disneyland when I was six, spotting Minnie Mouse and instantly enveloping her in hugs. As a fully-grown adult having this kind of excitement and glee over seeing this whimsical character whose beeping wise cracks are so familiar to me, my students, and my fellow teachers, I can only imagine the joy that my students would have. I instantly uploaded the photo online for all of my students back at home, who comment back with cries of joy and, “Did he beep?” I discovered BrainPOP as a student teacher five years ago and never turned back. Oftentimes, videos can be maligned… Read the Rest»