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!)

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

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…

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.

In light of it being Safer Internet Day we thought we’d post a little reminder that BrainPOP UK is a totally safe place for kids to hang out – that’s why Tim & Moby hang out here so much!

There’s a lot about keeping kids safe online in the news today but we’re always concerned about online safety! And that’s why our Online Safety movie is always free. Watch it with your class today to learn Tim & Moby’s easy-to-follow top online safety tips.

For other movies about keeping safe, online and off, have a look at our PSHE and Citizenship subject area.

Also, if you happened to miss him, Eylan BrainPOP was demoing BrainPOP UK and ActivExpression on the Promethean Planet stand at BETT this year. Because it’s such an important issue, he chose to demo Online Safety. If you’d like to learn how it all came together, Liam O’Marah’s written a great blog post about it.

Happy safer internet day!

We’ve been BrainPOPping in the UK for a year now so before we sign off to wish all of you a merry Xmas and happy new year we thought this is as good a time as any to stop and reflect back on an amazing year.

We sometimes say that a Tim & Moby movie takes your understanding of a concept “from nothing to something“. That also couldn’t be a better way of describing what we’ve been through in 2009.

There’s so many things we could list and the team will never agree on exactly what the top 6 should be, but we all think the following were pretty significant moments.

1. Our first customer!

You never forget your first time, so they say. Well our first ever customer was Okehampton College in Devon. Thank you for placing your trust in Tim, Moby and the BrainPOP UK team. We hope you’ve had a very BrainPOPpy year.

2. BETT 2009

If you’ve ever run or staffed a BETT stand you’ll know what a rush to the head it can be. We were a teeny tiny team at the start of the year and the sheer amount of tasks we needed to squeeze in took us by surprise. We thought we’d ticked all the many, many BETT boxes but we’d missed off one important thing: electricity. We just didn’t realise power was something you had to organise.

And for an online service electricity is pretty important.

Luckily our very able stand design company, BJA Designs, sorted us a last minute Sparky and we were up and running in time.

On the plus side our hard work paid off and we met 100’s of teachers, the vast majority of whom hadn’t heard of BrainPOP UK, and made some firm friends. Just don’t get us started on the amount of pens we ordered. It was also good experience for exhibiting at BETT 2010.

3. Teachmeet at the Scottish Learning Festival and multiple TeachMeet movie adaptions

Ollie Bray, a long time fan of BrainPOP (especially in Geography), asked us if we could produce a special one-off BrainPOP UK movie to inform people what a TeachMeet is all about. We’ve always been big supporters of CPD and TeachMeet – how could we refuse? You can see our TeachMeet movie on Youtube, where anyone can embed it into their own website.

Soon after, as tends to happen when an idea really starts to gain traction (go viral?), we were asked to do movie adaptions for Perth, Blackpool, East Lothian and Falkirk TeachMeets. Little known fact: If you ask for an adapted TeachMeet movie we put YOUR name into the famous Tim & Moby letter.

The TeachMeeters also kindly put the movie on the front page of the TeachMeet Wiki website. This year TeachMeet is going to happen across 3 nights: TEDxOrenda, AMPed (Amplified) and the TeachMeet itself.

As well as TeachMeet Takeover, where exhibitors open up a part of their stand for a TeachMeeter to “takeover” for half an hour to demo free and useful Web 2.0 type classroom tools. Naturally, we think that sounds really worthwhile and lots of fun so we voluteered too.

4. Our Swine Flu movie goes past 10,000 hits…then 20,000…then 30,000…

A little while back Swine Flu was a big headline topic. One thing BrainPOP does well is react quickly to classroom needs, when we are able.

In this instance we made a Swine Flu movie aimed at kids, to help answer some of the basic questions (“You can’t catch it from eating bacon, can you?”) and quell a few fears children may have.

We decided to upload it to Youtube and allow people to embed it in their own school blogs and websites. To keep an important topic free. We wrote all about our decision to do this on our blog: The little movie that could.

We got loads of favourable comments on the movie and it even ended up being reported in the TES and the Times Schoolgate blog.

5. Our first UK movie – Bonfire Night

BrainPOP UK is part of the global BrainPOP family. Our resources are currently nearly all anglicised versions from the incredible collection of movies on BrainPOP.com. But part of the appeal of a UK BrainPOP is to develop new UK resources that are meaningful to UK classrooms. Our first UK movie was Bonfire night. It was a UK subject scripted by a UK author. It was a very proud moment to finally launch a bit of BrainPOP history.

There’s lots more coming in 2010, but we won’t spoil the surprise just yet.

6. Listening to classroom stories

This is a fine entry as our last pick and a personal favourite. As well as the reviews BrainPOP UK has garnered over the last 12 months there’s little better than hearing from our users.

We love to tell classroom stories of how different teachers around the UK are using BrainPOP UK resources with their pupils. Whether you are a Newly Qualified Teacher, Home educator, Award winning ICT Specialist or Maths Teacher we’re happy to show off your BrainPOP thoughts on our blog.

We know there will be many more stories to tell in 2010 (2009 was just lighting the touchpaper for the BrainPOP fireworks coming in 2010) so we’ll simply wish you a very merry Xmas and happy new year from all the BrainPOPpers, from around the world.

Ho ho ho!

Are you an educator that uses BrainPOP UK?

• Would you like to join the team on our stand for a few hours at BETT 2010 exhibition and talk to fellow teachers about BrainPOP UK?
• Would you like us to pay your travel/subsistence expenses to go to BETT?
• Would you like your very own exclusive Moby T-shirt and a few stories to tell in the Staffroom?

Aha! We thought that last one would get your attention.

We have a stand at BETT 2010 (S46, on the balcony). It’s not a big stand; it’s not a glamorous stand. It will look very similar to this one from last year.

But it will be a fun and busy stand; full of BrainPOPpy goodness.

We’d love a few teachers to do a couple of hours with us each day, between 10am and 3pm. You’ll be showing BrainPOP UK to other teachers, simply telling them what you already know. This is not a sales thing – you’ll just be teaching them about BrainPOP UK. We’ll be on hand at all times to support you.

You’ll connect with so many educators from all walks of life from around the world and make a few new friends into the bargain.

You can join us on any day you like. BETT runs from Wednesday 13th to Saturday 16th.

Plus you get the rest of the time to take a look round BETT too. And you can keep the T-shirt.

So if you think you, or a colleague, might want to work with Tim, Moby and the BrainPOP UK crew for the day email us: info@brainpop.co.uk as soon as you can and we’ll take it from there.

How often do you hear the following phrase, directly after someone receives a prize:

“I never win anything!”

Well, we hope the following schools utter this immortal phrase when they read their emails this morning. Because they all won some nifty prizes when they came to chat to us on our stand at a recent Aberdeenshire authority event and signed up to a free trial.

1. First prize – A 6-month school subscription to BrainPOP UK, a limited edition Moby T-shirt and a mug:
   Morag Andrew at Fishermoss School
2. Second prize – A limited edition Moby T-shirt, mug and mouse mat:
   Allicia Coates at Mearns Academy
3. Third prize – A limited edition Moby T-shirt and mouse mat:
   Jill Duncary at Clerkhill School

Well done to all 3 of you.

So next time give the competition a try – you never know when it might be YOU!