POPtalk

We’ve thought long and hard about how we can make being a BrainPOP UK subscriber even more beneficial than it already is. On that note (drum roll please) we’d like to introduce you to a brand new feature: Spotlights.

Being part of BrainPOP UK  should be rewarding, providing a sprinkle of inspiration each time you log in. So a subscriber-only space where we bring together movies, additional content, and fun stuff all in one place seemed to be just the ticket.

The main aim being? To create a place of inspiration for teachers and students alike and ensure you get the most from being part of BrainPOP UK.

Hence, Spotlights. We’re unveiling them this week. But, what are they?

Spotlights bring together hand-picked movies relating to a central theme. They also provide additional content in the shape of fun experiments, info sheets, lesson plans, links to handy Spotlight-related websites and POP Spot; a special Spotlights area of POPtalk.

We’ve come up with a different Spotlight for each month of the year so hopefully you’ll find something useful for lessons.

To help you plan, here’s what’s coming up:

Spotlight on…stupendous structures and oustanding construction. Gravity, compression and tension at work.

Spotlight on…wet, windy and wonderful weather. Eyes skywards for some cloud spotting with Tim & Moby.

Spotlight on…your world. Up for a rescue mission? Taking responsibility to reboot, reuse and recycle.

Spotlight on…growing up. Can you blame it all on the hormones? Yes you can! Tim & Moby help with a few growing pains.

Spotlight on…the human body. It’s an amazing machine. Learn how it works, and how to look after it properly, with Tim & Moby.

Spotlight on…a galaxy far far away. Tim & Moby journey into Space, avoiding the Death Star, to investigate planets, stars, galaxies and more.

We’ve made our first Spotlight accessible to all to start with so that everyone gets the chance to try Super Structures on for size.

Your feedback is like gold dust to us so let us know what you think – any suggestions welcome!

We’re doing much nail biting in anticipation (eugh!)

For our first Spotlight we’ve come up with a few fun activities you can try with your students.

Activity 1 – Virtual lego

Get your class to create their own virtual lego super structures!

Download the Lego Simulator here. Tim & Moby aren’t too pleased with our sorry attempt…they think you can do better!

Activity 2 – Design a super building

We’d love it if you and your class created a Moby-related super structure but you could start off easy, draw Tim & Moby a house.

Tim & Moby House Blueprint

We used free software from SmartDraw but you could just as easily use Paint, Microsoft Word^©, Paint.NET or good old paper, pencil, ruler and rubber.

Activity 3 – Get building!

Why not build a lego super structure together as a whole class activity? Look at what Zoe POPpette achieved!

Activity 4 – Spotting super structures

Why not pretend it’s Spring already and head out with your class to take photos of local super structures? Here’s a very famous super structure local to us BrainPOPpers, Hertford Bridge:

Whether you draw, build or photograph a super structure, please send us the results.

Try and find at least 3 reasons your structure is so super. Who will use your super structure? Can people live in it? Any environmentally friendly features? Any robot friendly features?

Here’s what we said about our photo of Hertford Bridge:

1. Our super structure was completed in 1914
2. It is often referred to as the Bridge of Sighs because of its supposed similarity to the Bridge of Sighs in Venice but it actually looks more like the Rialto Bridge in Venice
3. It is called Hertford Bridge and is part of Hertford College

Not very exciting but perhaps your pupils come up with a super structure that:

1. turns orange when the sun shines?
2. recycles grey water?
3. knocks at least one of the world’s tallest buildings from the top ten?

Email photos and files to info@brainpop.co.uk with “We’ve got a super structure” in the subject line.

We’ll upload everything you send us to this Spotlight blog and, at the end of the month, Tim & Moby will pick their favourite.

It’s time to start being social with those bookmarks, BrainPOPpers!

Delicious is a free online bookmarking tool. It’s owned by Yahoo, has been around ages and is our service of choice for collecting weblinks for our new Spotlights. This is us: http://delicious.com/brainpop_uk

We’ll be spotlighting a new topic every month. We want to gather a list of useful websites to compliment them so you and your pupils can explore around our chosen Spotlight.

Here’s an example. In March our Spotlight is on “superstructures“. We’ve got movies on such things as Seven Wonders of the World, Levers, Architecture and so on. The Spotlight is supposed to be a hub of inspiration for you and your students.

This is how it works:

1. If you are a Delicious user already then please add “brainpopukspotlights” to your Delicious network. If you are not, then sign up – it’s incredibly useful in general.
2. Make sure you have the Delicious tagging buttons installed to your browser.
3. When you find a site that you think might be useful to other BrainPOPpers on a particular Spotlight then “tag” it using one of the tags from our list of Spotlight tags and “send” it to “brainpopukspotlights”.
4. It’s important you use exactly the right keyword or it won’t aggreategate all your submissions to the same place.
5. Doing these two things will make sure it appears in our Spotlights Delicious bookmark list and appear in our Widget. You are welcome to add other tags of your choice too, which would also be helpful such as “buildings” or “Skyscrapers”.
6. Other users will then be able to access this growing list of weblinks anywhere they can get to the internet.

Why do this?

The more links everyone adds the bigger and more useful each collection gets. The BrainPOP UK team will be adding useful sites they come across too.

Do I have to be a Delicious user to take advantage of this?

You DON’T need to be a Delicious user to access all the weblinks – only to contribute new ones. It’s entirely up to you.

Do you control what gets added?

We don’t have external control over any websites except our own. You follow links external to BrainPOP UK at your own risk. We cannot stop you tagging websites but we will monitor the list every day and remove any from our account we feel are inappropriate.

How do I know if a website is relevent to a Spotlight?

Simply use your common sense. We WANT BrainPOPpers to add anything they think useful or insprational. Perhaps you use a website/tool/resource/game and want to spread the word. As long as it is related to a Spotlight it will be useful. In Delicious you can also add a description to any website you tag so use this to perhaps describe how you might use it in an educational setting.

What if I find a good site and the Spotlight has finished?

Our Spotlights will be archived. So you can add weblinks now for Spotlights not due for ages. And of course you can add weblinks well beyond when a Spotlight has finished! So add any relevent weblink at any time you like. It could be useful to someone.

The clever boys and girls at Common Craft are extremely good at explaining different web tools so let’s leave it to them to explain Delicious (via TeacherTube):

Other educators using Delicious:

http://delicious.com/Bill_Lord – emphasis on Ed tech and literacy (Bill Lord, Regional Adviser in Literacy for the National Strategies).

http://delicious.com/priestsic – general useful school weblinks gathered by Priestic School via Tom Barrett

Our delicious tags up until August:

March – Super Structures – tag: superstructures

April – Sky Spirits – tag: skyspirits

May – Reboot, Recycle, Reuse – tag: reboot

June – Growing Pains – tag: growingpains

July – BodyPOPping – tag: bodypopping

August – Starship BrainPOP – tag: starshipbrainpop

If you’re unfamiliar with Delicious and feel you need some tips on how to use it, click here for some help.

PLEASE NOTE: We don’t have control over any external websites you may choose to visit from this blog/widget. You follow links external to BrainPOP UK at your own risk.

Thanks to everyone who came along and helped make a success of the West Lothian BrainPOP UK demo at the West Lothian Education Centre yesterday.

We’re really glad so many teachers attended and were keen to have a shot!

Thanks especially to all who took part in our mini-competition.

Congratulations to t-shirt winners, Kirsteen, Jennifer and Ms. Ferguson! Your Mobylicious prizes are heading northbound today so keep an eye out for a pretty orange package popping through your letterbox…

Last night, something rather special happened. Teachers came together from all over Oxfordshire to transform the way that they plan at the first ever TeachMeet Fishbowl.

This all began in a meeting between James Bird (Oxfordshire Primary LA Advisor) and me (BrainPOPper), at the Rusty Bicycle, where we talked for a long lunchtime (over soft drinks!) about the joys of being inspired by innovation, at events like TeachMeet, and the challenge of making that transferable to the schools and teachers we worked with.

James had the idea to use an adult training method (andragogy) called Fishbowling, where a small group take on the role of ‘experts’, and engage with a real life problem, whilst a wider group watch and contribute. This is how it was set out (see the annotated version on Flickr courtesy of Leon Cynch for more detail):

This event needed to focus on the one aspect that all the TeachMeets, conferences, and workshops we had been to sometimes lacked: practical steps to improve planning.

How could we change that moment when a teacher sits with a blank sheet of paper – and turns it into a plan!

We hoped for three outcomes:

1 – That participants would be able to get engaged with planning in a way that they could take away ideas to apply to their schools immediately

2 – That we would inspire each other and share new ideas, tools, resources

3 – That we would create a local and powerful learning network which would have life after the event.

James has written more about what we planned and hoped for in a blog post:  TeachMeet Fishbowling

I set up a Ning space, we invited folk in, most of whom had not really used online spaces in this sort of way. Fishbowls are not about ICT or technology led. We made the event invite only and kept the proceedings closed (not streamed) because we wanted to test this model and allow people to be open and honest, without fear of colleagues, parents or looking daft!

I invited Tom Barrett and Dawn Hallybone to help us, as great friends of BrainPOP UK (they are both VIBs!) and experienced TeachMeeters (Tom was so inspired that he filmed himself at the beginning of his planning process for his Superheroes topic last term) and Leon Cych, of Learn 4 Life offered to come and video the event.

We were also lucky to be joined by Mark Berthelemy who has years of experience making CPD work, both on and offline.

The hardest thing to do in any walk of life, is to bring about behaviour change. Even in those who want to change, or believe in it, acknowledge that making change happen is difficult and rare.

Last night we got some talented and skilled practitioners to share, think, and do in a slightly different way. We set in motion something that was unique in all our experiences of CPD.  Questions of how we sustain this, and the ways this fits with policy and in practice are hard. But I have no doubt in the abilities of the people in that room to find the answers – together!

Is this way ‘better‘? Can I make a value judgement of the efficacy of this model, just because people did something different from normal? I know that we captured the ‘Aha!’ moments that make traditional TeachMeets so inspiring, but also grounded them in practice. We demonstrated the power of social learning – something we all believe in with children – and established network based on trust.

BrainPOP UK was involved because we believe in local CPD networks. Which is why we support TeachMeets.

There are lots of great posts already, talking about last night, if you want to read more about it, try these starting points:

• http://twitterfall.com/?trend=%23tmfishbowl!%231F3547
• http://buzzinged.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/reflecting-on-teach-meet-fish-bowl/
• http://www.learningconversations.co.uk/main/index.php/2010/02/25/reflections-on-the-oxford-teachmeet-fishbowl?blog=5

Finally, can I thank:

• Oxfordshire County Council who supplied the the venue
• Tim & Moby for providing the food, drink and nibbles.
• Joe, Victoria W. ,  Lizzie, Rebecca (who came despite being in the middle of an Ofsted inspection), Mike, Row, Joan, Dawn, Mark, Tom, Nick, Matt, Leon, Carol, Carolyne, Victoria S. , Amy, and James (did I miss anyone?).

We took delivery of a table today.

You might be wondering why we are blogging about it. Because it’s not just any table, that’s why.

Where to start? We have recently moved offices and we needed a new table. A table for us to meet at. A boardroom type table. We looked in the catalogues, and the options were…terrible. Or at least, terribly uninspiring.

Hugely overpriced steel and glass things, or chipboard with thin veneer on. Even the secondhand options were bad – proving the poor quality of most office furniture.

So, we thought we’d start from first principles:

• We wanted something remarkable.
• We needed something affordable.
• We wanted something crafted.
• We wanted something sustainable, local and with a low carbon footprint.
• We wanted something that shouted BrainPOP UK

Quite a brief, eh?

Phil Pritchard , a local “permaculture designer” and expert on sustainability, works with kids who are out of the school system, to develop skills like carpentry and permaculture. Frontiers is a very cool charity that does very important work. So we got in touch and pitched him the project.

Phil said we could use reclaimed wood, local materials, and bring the kids into the process of creating a table. How could we refuse?

Phil found some lovely mahogany beams, and some oak from the side of a pub bar (the pieces came from ‘Ocean & Collins’, a drinking bar in Oxford which is now Kukui, a Tiki bar/club), and began work.

He was slightly hampered by some terrible weather, and quite a difficult design to create, with a very specific orange colour scheme.

The kids in the project were initially less than interested in making a table, but as it began to take shape and they saw it was a GIANT ROBOT FACE they started to get involved.

Then, today, all the pieces arrived, and Phil put them together.

So, at last, we can finally introduce you to our new BrainPOP UK meeting table!

Please feast your eyes on this table made of reclaimed local materials by a local craftsman and kids learning new skills, that is both remarkable and truly the most BrainPOPpy piece of furniture in the universe!

Fairtrade Fortnight begins on 22nd February and, as Fairtrade is an issue us BrainPOPpers care quite passionately about, we’re taking part in the Fairtrade Foundation’s Big Swap.

We’ve always been Fairtrade tea drinkers but we got coffee in on Monday too…

The BrainPOP team may be all about the caffeinated drinks (and bananas) but there’s lots of stuff the Fairtrade Foundation suggest you can swap.

Why should you swap?

“Fairtrade believes that developing world producers should be in control of their own lives, by getting a better deal for the work that they do. This is a different way of doing business. It’s a way that puts the poorest of the world first.” (http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/thebigswap/why_you_should_swap/)

We registered our swap here – it’s pretty cool getting to see it in all its swap glory.

The Fairtrade Foundation are trying to get one million and one swaps registered over the fortnight so we’d like to encourage you to join in the fun. Schools, towns and even islands can be Fairtrade.

To show your support and learn more you can follow the Fairtrade UK twitter feed or become a fan of their Facebook page. They’ve also got a Flickr group where all sorts of people are posting funny massive inflatable coffee mug pics. We don’t think our photo qualifies in the amusement stakes. ..

We hope to be adding more to the Fairtrade Big Swap list throughout the fortnight so we’ll keep you posted via twitter.

In the name of social research, and the fact we can’t stop thinking about delicious pancakes for Shrove Tuesday tomorrow, we thought we’d conduct a little poll:

Just in case you’d completely forgotten about pancake day, here’s a little recipe from the matriarch of the British kitchen herself, Delia Smith.

Some tips from the BrainPOP UK office:

1. Melt plenty of butter in your frying pan before you add the batter. This prevents your pancake from sticking. A good frying pan always helps here too.
2. Don’t use too much batter – stodgy pancakes ahoy! You’ll be surprised how far a couple of large tablespoons of batter can go.
3. It’s all in the flick of the wrist. Try not to toss your pancake too high – it’s never nice to eat food that was once on the ceiling (or the floor for that matter!)

As we’ve noticed from year to year, it’s usually a case of trial and error…then ending up too full to eat your final perfect pancake.

If you want to learn from the year-in-year-out try-hards, here’s how the Blue Peter team suggest you go about it. And, can anyone find a clip of Yvette Fielding and her pancake attempt on Blue Peter around about 1988? Please send us a link! We found one here but it’s not the best…

Good luck to all of those who plan to toss a pancake or two around the kitchen tomorrow. Hats off to you if you manage frying and flipping in the classroom with your students! Wherever you’re cooking, we hope your pancakes taste delightful.

The pains and pleasures of pancake day. We can’t wait!

Love is in the air this Valentine’s Day…or is it?

Well, we love BrainPOP (obviously) and loooove Tim & Moby so we penned a little something for the romance of it all. Ah, the robomance!

Sonnet BP, Shall we watch Tim & Moby at school today?

Shall we watch Tim & Moby at school today?
He art so orange and robotic.
A ticking clock could stop our BrainPOP play,
For English lessons hath all too few minutes.
Sometimes our time is too confined,
And often is Moby’s gold complexion dimmed;
And off we must go to other lessons,
No BrainPOP there, because it’s gym.
But Moby’s gold complexion shall not fade
Nor lose possession of his funny ways;
Nor shall a slow server keep him down,
For Tim & Moby like to keep it short,
So long as we have 5 minutes spare,
Tim & Moby can show us Poetry with flair.

Not a robomantic? You can view all of these fab and totally unrobomantic movies all rather tenuously linked to the big V day…

Heart – we all have one, and they’ll be dotted about here, there and everywhere this week so why not watch the movie and let Tim & Moby tell you how it all works.

Poetry – let Tim & Moby give you the poetry low-down. Bonus points if you spot the sci-fi reference. Poetry isn’t always robomantic.

William Shakespeare – he not only authored 154 sonnets, but he gave us Romeo, Juliet, Henry V and Richard III, and they all get name dropped in our movie by our favourite pair.

Venus – the Greek goddess of love and beauty (and also a planet you can learn about today on BrainPOP!)

Pollination – last but certainly not least, what is love without the birds and bees?

Thanks for reading. Why not let Moby know you love him too? Post a valentine’s message on our Facebook fan page and we’ll make sure he gets it.

He may even respond. Though, we can’t guarantee he’ll pen you an ode.