POPtalk

We are keen supporters of TeachMeet Takeovers at BETT. We actually hosted the very first one by Tom Barrett in 2010 and, frankly, it was such a blast, we couldn’t wait to volunteer our stand for 2012.

This year we were lucky enough to have three teachers take over our stand, each of whom, in the spirit of TeachMeet, were  more than happy to share their presentations with us so we could share them with you.  What a wonderful world!

1. Mark Anderson (a.k.a. @ICTevangelist) kicked off with a crowded session on Thursday where he shared the “cornerstones” of his classroom: Web 2.0 tools you can use straight away. He managed to cram an unbelievable amount into just 15 minutes and told us about the following, to name just a few:

• Popplet, a mindmapping tool that works on the iPad
• A free online presentation tool, SlideRocket
• SpicyNodes – a mindmapping tool which teachers can even use to write schemes of work
• VisuWords – an online graphical dictionary
• Format Factory – a free tool for converting mediatypes
• And offered good tips and tricks for using YouTube in school

2. On Friday, we were delighted to have Julia Skinner (a.k.a. @TheHeadsOffice) “let loose” [her own words] on the stand and tell us all about the 100 word challenge, a creative writing challenge which aims to spark the imagination of potentially reluctant writers. It’s truly awe-inspiring to see what kids have written and shared with a worldwide blogging (and tweeting) community.

3. And finally on Friday we had Phil Bagge (a.k.a. Baggiepr) take over the stand with an animated and engaging presentation about how easy and effective it is to blog in schools using an iPod Touch and Posterous.

You can find a full list of other takeovers from the four days here: TeachMeet Takeover BETT 2012

Related Posts:

• BETTer late than never – highlights from BETT 2012
• Teachers Takeover BETT 2011
• Turning it up to 11 at BETT
• Back from BETT 2010 Part 2 – Teachers Takeover BrainPOP UK
• Talking BrainPOP and taking Heart

The “Student Voice” is a concept described by NASUWT as:

“…the empowerment of pupils to enable them to be engaged and involved in the learning process, thus helping teachers and other members of the school workforce to raise standards and meet the needs of individual learners.”

The following is feedback that was shared with us from a student voice session with year 7 & 8 at Redhill Academy . They were asked to provide feedback on “what they think makes a good lesson”. We share this because, as well as being interesting (and honest) student opinions, we think this chimes with much of what BrainPOP stands for or encourages.

Being able to have fun whilst you are learning.

• “It helps you learn and helps you to take things in if you enjoy what you are doing”.
• “Activities that are “fun” are short and varied”.
• “Where possible lessons should have a hands on approach so we can learn whilst doing”.

Teacher having a sense of humour

• “If you are afraid of a teacher it can affect your learning, teachers with a sense of humour are approachable and you don’t worry about asking for help”.
• “Teachers that have a sense of humour seem happy teaching kids which makes us want to be in their class”.

Being able to use technology

• “Using technology in lessons can help to make things clearer, it is not always easy to see what is written on the board from the back of the room”.
• “Interactive white boards are good but some teachers don’t really allow the pupils to use them in any way which is frustrating because then they are not very interactive”.

Teacher being willing to talk off the point

• “It is good to know that if you have something to share with the group that the teacher will let you speak and maybe your ideas could start a discussion”.
• “It helps us to see how one thing can be linked to another”.

Regular feedback

• “Comments and corrections are helpful, not just ticks and crosses”.
• “Allowing other pupils to mark your work creates anxiety, what if they mark it wrong? Or laugh at your answer?”
• “Marking your own work makes you see where you have gone wrong, however, some pupils feel that this can be a boring activity and that time spent marking your own work could be spent learning”.

Related Posts:

• A great “hook” into learning
• Top 10 BrainPOP UK comedy moments

“Great opportunity for staff to review the resources. A fresh approach to using video within the curriculum. All the responses were very positive.”

Rhona MacKenzie, West Dunbartonshire Authority

What a lovely thing to say. But what’s Rhona talking about? One of our new POPteach workshops.

BrainPOP itself is so simple to grasp there’s not much call for conventional “training”. So we don’t offer it.

The key challenge is to raise awareness of what BrainPOP UK can do in context – for YOU in YOUR lessons. A workshop where the focus is “BrainPOP plus CPD”.

A POPteach workshop is an opportunity to gather a group of educators together to talk Tim & Moby. They may be subscribers or they may be total newbies to BrainPOP resources – all are welcome. It may be facilitated by a BrainPOPper or a VIB. Or both!

Our pilot POPteach workshops have been held in Scotland. At the most recent our Scottish Ambassador, Kim Conway, worked with the West Dunbartonshire Authority to hold a twilight CPD workshop. Ten teachers from seven different schools attended. As is the BrainPOP way they got showered with cool BrainPOP merchandise including badges, pens and chocolates. We offered fruit too, but curiously that didn’t turn out to be as popular.

Kim ran through the site, highlighting gems such Deep Beep, Spotlights and POPboxes and offered practical examples of how BrainPOP can be employed in the classroom.

Participation is a key part of a POPteach workshop. Kim likes attendees to join in with the POPquiz, and it wasn’t long before teachers were leaping up to the whiteboard to select answers.

These are only tentative baby steps with POPteach – we’re still polishing the format and always looking for feedback.

Each attendee is asked to give the experience a mark out of 10. We’re proud to say we received a 10/10 across the board. Did the chocolate sway people? Who knows. A good result either way. These are some of the workable ideas the teachers took away with them (everyone at this workshop had not used BrainPOP before, though some were aware of us):

• Use movies within classroom as discussion starters.
• Tell the staff. Log in and try it out.
• BrainPOP will tie in with my current topic. I intend to share BrainPOP with my colleagues – it is a useful resource.
• Using movies with class related to current movies being sponsored.
• Would like to use the videos for science.
• Share with staff.  Use  free trial period in lessons with my class (P6) particularly in relation to e-safety.
• Make use of the free trial in cross curricular areas and across stages.
• I intend to use BrainPOP in line with Es and Os within the classroom if the video enhances the concepts we are covering.
• Share with the rest of the staff and try out during the trial period.
• To enhance my lessons. To incorporate into topics using ACfE links.
• All useful. This was excellent. Great for pupils (+staff).

It’s only fair to mention what was noted we could do better:

• Could have had more ‘hands on’.

In particular it was great to hear how useful Deep Beep, our Curriculum Matching Tool, could be. Some teachers mentioned how easy it would be to incorporate BrainPOP links into topics they are currently teaching.

One thing that was said to us was “Good to see site, often ended up on it through Google but didn’t know what it was”, which is a lesson for us and a good reason why we might be holding more POPteach events round the country soon.

And finally, as is our wont, we couldn’t help but offer some lovely BrainPOP UK prizes! Congratulations to Kate Watson from Levenvale Primary who won a BrainPOP UK T-shirt, Carolann McVey from Levenvale Primary who won a goodie bag, and Marion Henry from St Mary’s Primary School in Alexandria who walked away with a class set of badges.

Related Posts:

• Calder-lightful! Using BrainPOP UK in Secondary English
• Highlights from the Scottish Learning Festival
• Meet Deep Beep
• Bringing ‘a little something’ to CPD in Dundee
• Through the Looking Bowl – Teachmeet Fishbowling with BrainPOP UK

BrainPOP UK are part of a very special new evening event at BETT 2011 – Collabor8 4 Change

BrainPOP UK have long been fans of the unconference / BarCamp model of event, such as TeachMeets and Fishbowling.

This year we were kindly asked to join Merlin John , Apple, Rising Stars & Dave Smith of the Havering ICT team to create a new type of event for teachers.

Collabor8 4 Change is the result – an unconference focused on School Leaders.

So what is it?

• Share best-practice ideas that you can take away and implement in your school
• Collabor8 with like-minded, award-winning ICT innovators that are willing to share
• Join discussion sessions that will challenge thinking and inspire change

What would I get from it?

All attendees will benefit from the experience and conversation with leading ICT practitioners as they openly share best practice use of hardware and software, with an emphasis on the impact on pupil outcomes and making effective use of existing ICT resources.

With an impressive, thought-provoking, mixture of exciting table-based sessions and focused mini-note presentations from ICT experts such as:

• Hannah Jones (Former Special Projects Director at NCSL)
• Steve Bunce (CPD Leader at VITAL)
• Bob Harrison (Consultant with BECTA and the NCSL)
• Adina Popa (Educator, VSTE Innovator of the Year, Staff Developer, #globaled10 Regional Chair, Speaker, Writer)

And it’s completely FREE!

So, what are you waiting for? Follow any of these links to find out more:

• Sign up at the official Collabo8 4 Change web page
• Linked In users can sign up here for the Collabor8 4 Change event page
• Become a Fan on Facebook

Date: Thursday 13th January 2011

Time: 6:00pm- 9:00pm

Venue: The Apex Room, BETT, Olympia, London

Related Posts:

• Turning it up to 11 at BETT
• BrainPOP connects at the Global Education Conference
• The magnetic power of technology
• Teachers Takeover BETT 2011
• Small is beautiful

We sponsor many TeachMeet style events up and down the UK but there had never been one in our home town of Oxford. Until last week.

James Bird at TeachMeet Oxon

One of the organisers, an Oxford teacher called Matt Lovegrove, kindly asked us to sponsor. We didn’t hesitate to sign up and created one of our special Tim & Moby movies to help him promote the event and support those who have never been to a TeachMeet before understand more about its purpose.

We’re based in Oxford and, as this was also Oxfordshire’s first official TeachMeet, I decided to contribute. I gave a 2 min nano-presentation about a personal idea I have been brewing with Doug Belshaw called ” #positiveparent ” which, though not ready for full release, was clear enough to share in an unconference setting. Thanks especially to Nicki Wise and Sheenagh Broadbent who were full of ideas and constructive support for ways forward on this afterwards.

Doug Belshaw, unable to make it from the North East to Oxford, instead created an awesome video for the night called “Models of Learning” which discusses the Puentedura’s SAMR model (Substitution – Augmentation – Modification – Redefinition) and Boyer’s model of scholarship. This fascinating presentation captures why he is one of the most authentic, valuable and challenging voices in my learning network. It’s really worth a watch and I’ve embedded it below:

We’ve posted our pictures from the night on Flickr, you can see a listing and some thoughts from the BrainPOP UK subscription prize winner in Brian Sharland’s “Reflection on TeachMeet Oxon” post and, for those that wished they were there, and you can see a complete recording of the whole night.

Brian Sharland winning a BrainPOP UK subscription

We look forward to more local TeachMeets!

Related Posts:

• Plan for people, not technology
• Sharing the TeachMeet Takeovers from BETT 2012
• BETTer late than never – highlights from BETT 2012
• Moving on from TeachMeet sponsorship
• Kismet at Kidsmeet

As part of the incredible StoryTyne event held last week in Newcastle. I have posted about Tim Rylands presentation and about some of the other speakers.  I was lucky enough to co-present a workshop with Bill Boyd and Alan Yeoman. I called my workshop ‘Where Fact meets Fiction’ – and tried to make it as interactive as possible. After a short explanation of why I was there and what BrainPOP UK can bring to enhance teaching and learning, I shared the key ingredients to a BrainPOP UK movie:

Ingredients

• 3 key learning ‘points’
• 3 levels of ability – talk, animate and label for all three!
• 3 minute target – keep it pacy.

• Consistent & Clear
• Accurate
• Narrative Driven
• Engaging and Remarkable
• Fun

But, rather than reading more about it – see below for a short vid of my session!

Related Posts:

• StoryTyne – BrainPOP UK joins a stellar cast!
• StoryTyne – Tim Rylands spins a tale
• WEBINAR: Brush up on BrainPOP
• BrainPOP’s here all summer
• EXPLORE A TOPIC: The History of the UK

We all know CPD is important but there’s no excuse for dull sessions. We think the CPD Workshop we held at Rockwell High School in Dundee this week was  successful, because we got great feedback. But, we’re always learning and would love to hear what else we could have do to make them better.

We believe it’s fun to get teachers involved at CPD workshops, not just talk at them – you wouldn’t expect pupils to just sit and listen, so why should you?

The CPD Workshop was led by Kim Conway, our BrainPOP UK Ambassador in Scotland, and boy does she love a bit of  audience participation! Engagement is, in part, about valuing the contribution and role of the learners, and bringing ‘a little something’ was a popular choice for Kim’s Dundee attendees. So, she set out a BrainPOP UK pack, chocolate and badge for each teacher for some competition fun. Welcome to our world, Dundee…

• Lucky badges – Everybody got the same badge apart from two lucky teachers; BrainPOP UK goody bags were handed over to smiling winners – it should teach folk to sit nearer the front next time.
• BrainPOP UK pen – Winning a pen turned out to be a bit of a flop with a mixed response from attendees – we guess a pen’s a pen in the end!
• Class set of BrainPOP UK badges – For coming to the front and answering a complete quiz, well done Darren!
• T-shirt competition – Well done Christine Howie from Clepington Primary School – you should have received your T-shirt by now so please wear with pride.

Quiz time! BrainPOP UK quizzes can be done in different ways, to reflect the different models of assessment and classroom management that teachers might use them. There’s more about this in our blog post, ‘Let’s get quizzical‘. Kim used the Graded Quiz option, using a ‘summative’ assesment model. The graded quizzes were good fun; attendees answered questions but didn’t get immediate feedback about whether they got it  right. It turns out, they got 8/10! Great result, but definately scope for improvement and more BrainPOPping!

Curriculum for Excellence – Another highlight for attendees was seeing our Curriculum Matching Tool, Deep Beep, as each topic is mapped to Curriculum for Excellence.

Tim and Moby support Curriculum for Excellence

We had some great feedback from attendees which we’ll definitely take on board.  Here’s a small selection of quotes…

Which parts of the CPD workshop were most useful?

“Going through the curricular areas to see what was available in terms of matching CfE outcomes and experiences”

“Demonstrating the movies and examples of quiz format. The curriculum matching tool is really useful”

“Associated movies and further links”

“The demonstration of how the site could be used within the school. Hands on approach”

What could be improved?

“Once we know how the quiz works/procedure for answering/giving wrong answers – more time can then be spent on becoming more familiar with other features”

“Don’t use up time trying to coax teachers up out of their seats”

How do you intend to use the skills/knowledge you have learned today in your school?

“I intend to pass on to other staff members and inform them of the free trial so they can take advantage of this fabulous resource”

“Will use it until September for literacy and Numeracy and let the children have a go and get feedback from them too”

“Pass on info and ask staff to trial – make a school decision based on usage and value”

“Share with colleagues. Poss use parts of some movies to introduce topics, stimulate discussion”

How might BrainPOP UK help you in future?

“Introducing topics or evaluating knowledge of topics”

“Allow children to back up the classroom learning after a lesson or as a teaching tool during the lesson”

“If movies are developed for infants would use it”

And, what important things did we learn for future CPD workshops?

Thank you to Louise from Dundee City Council for her help making this workshop happen and to Kim for her unyielding dedication to BrainPOPping.

What makes a great CPD session? What would you expect at a BrainPOP UK session? What horror stories can you share, and tips from the best?

Looking forward to seeing you at a BrainPOP UK event soon!

Related Posts:

• Scotland gets POPteach
• WEBINAR: Making your Interactive Whiteboard POP
• WEBINAR: Brush up on BrainPOP
• WEBINAR: Is your school thinking about Google Apps?
• WEBINAR: BrainPOP and Creativity on your iPad

You can find a million books on becoming a teacher. But there’s only one crowd sourced book that gives you real advice from real teachers – The PGCE Survival Guide. And it’s a must read for any aspiring teachers, or those thinking of going into teaching.

Tim Handley, a newly qualified Primary teacher and BrainPOP UK fan, has created this book entirely from his and others’ experiences. We’re also honoured that he picked BrainPOP UK as one of his recommended “Useful on-Line resources” for PGCE (Postgraduate certificate in education) students. We want to show our support in return.

We’ll leave it to Tim to describe his work.

“The PGCE Survival guide- the Essential guide to your teacher training.

Fed up of reading boring theory book after theory book?

Want to know what being a trainee teacher is really like?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just get real tips, from real teachers?

Well, let me introduce the PGCE Survival Guide! It’s full of useful and practical hints, tips and advice from recent PGCE graduates and more experienced teachers covering every element of teacher training, from your first day at university, through the hectic world of placements to finding a job- we have it all covered!

You won’t find countless chapters about educational theory- just real tips and advice from real teachers. The PGCE survival guide also includes #pgcetipos – over 300 super useful hints and tips from the education community on twitter.”

You can download the book for free and/or order a printed copy for £6.91 from the PGCE Survival Guide incorporating #pgcetips page on Lulu.

Congratulations to Tim and the whole BrainPOP team wishes him every success with it.

Related Posts:

• WEBINAR: Making your Interactive Whiteboard POP
• WEBINAR: Brush up on BrainPOP
• WEBINAR: Is your school thinking about Google Apps?
• WEBINAR: BrainPOP and Creativity on your iPad
• Back to school? Three reasons to bring on BrainPOP!

In previous posts I have talked about our trials of a CPD model called Fishbowling. In Through the Looking Bowl, I wrote about how the idea came about, what we did and how we developed the idea.

We started by trialling it with small groups by invitation only and BrainPOP UK has been involved in getting this idea off the ground, along with Vital – but really, this has become a model that can be used by any group of teachers, in any setting.

Last week, we made the idea ‘live’; anyone could come, the video stream was live, and we witnessed a new mode of professional development flourish.

Rather than describe it blow by blow, here are a few key points to explain what it was, what we learned, and where it might go next…

• The model went well – discussion was focussed and clear on task. People opened up and collaborated well.
• It was facilitated quite well – though this is always hard to tell with such a fluid activity model.
• The venue was lovely and the tech all worked well.
• The breaking out and coming back was good.

• The food was a bit average.
• We could have done more collating… and summarising…to report on ideas… so attendees knew where to go after.
• We should have thought harder about gathering feedback…and considered how to end the event and give attendees something to go away with.

So, there is so much to say about this night!

Here’s what Carol, from the Oxford ICT advisor team, wrote up about the evening: http://carol-carolrb.blogspot.com/2010/06/tmfishbowl.html

Also- read Ian Addisson’s comments here: http://ianaddison.net/?p=258

Further links, details and highlights can be found on Delicious, Spezify and Flickr.

And watch the full videos of the night here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7720984

Finally – thank you to all who came and contributed!

Related Posts:

• Through the Looking Bowl – Teachmeet Fishbowling with BrainPOP UK

There are going to be lots of people writing up their experiences of #TMHants, held last night in Southhampton.

Ian Addison and Gideon Williams did an incredible job of pulling this event together – but it was really the attendees that made it so special.

Probably the most interesting thing about last night was that for 95% of the attendees this was their first Teachmeet! And they loved it! There was loads of passion, excitement and genuine gasps as inspiration was shared.

So rather than going on about the presentations, I want to share some of the  random conversations that I had – for a mix of selfish and more altruistic reasons! Sorry not to include everything but this is only to give a flavour of the power of the ‘unconference’ model.

I finally got to meet Charlie Dean – who was sporting a very rare VIB t-shirt – and who was very kind about BrainPOP UK. It was great to hear how much her class enjoy the movies. More than that, she introduced me to some of the teachers at her school, who were also great. For example…

I had a great talk with the deputy head at her school about the power of teachmeets, the problems with ‘normal’ CPD, and the barriers of ICT. I did not get her name but she was super keen to come along to TMFishbowl on the 17th June, partly because of the success of #TMHants .

After watching Jon Audain’s fantastic presentations, I caught up with him and Emma Goto, and we swapped iPhone apps, early years sites and realised that we were all Tiggers!

Finally, Kristian Still came to find me at the end of the event to say some very nice things about BrainPOP UK – a perfect end to the night. Kristian said (and I’m paraphrasing here – based on my rosy memory of his words!) that he was hugely impressed with BrainPOP UK’s commitment to Teachmeets, to having authentic conversations with teachers and kids, and that we had brought a great resource to schools. I almost fell over with gratitude, because that it exactly what we set out to do, and here was a fantastic practitioner in a normal school reflecting that back to us.

We then went on to discuss about how his Digital Leaders, kids trained to be expert in edtech, might work with BrainPOP UK to share some learning…another great unexpected outcome from this fantastic event!

Finally, as I drove home up the A34, I kept replaying the evening in my mind and found it rich in ideas, practical activities and relationships with people that I want to continue.

Tired as I was (and am), I went to sleep (once I was in my bed, not while driving) H A P P Y.

Nice.

Related Posts:

• BETTer late than never – highlights from BETT 2012
• BrainPOP connects at the Global Education Conference
• April is National Pet Month
• Sharing the TeachMeet Takeovers from BETT 2012
• Moving on from TeachMeet sponsorship