One of the most exciting of these developments is the TeachMeet Takeovers, where a commercial supplier gives their stand over to a classroom practitioner to present on a free tool, service or learning experience that they want to share. We really like this idea as it appeals to the BrainPOP ethos that places, above all else, the learner at the heart of things. And it feels deliciously rebellious too

We had 4 teachers present their Takeovers - Dan Roberts, Alessio Bernardelli, Ian Guest and Bill Lord. Each one of them was erudite, interesting and entertaining. We uploaded some recordings of them below. We really do recommend you take the time to watch them, you will walk away enriched with practical ideas to take into your classroom.

Dan Roberts aka @chickensaltash “35 Free Tech Tools in 6 Mins and 40 secs”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq8IuB5ijAU

This is the Slideshare which contains all the links:

Chicken pecha kucha 20x20 free tech tools

Bill Lord, aka @Joga5, talking about his Year 1 “Giraffeclass” in which he employed Twitter as a tool for literacy:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAb7aO_CHJU

Ian Guest aka @ianinsheffield gives a TeachMeet Takeover entitled “Poll Dancing - Using online tools for formative assessment, eliciting opinion & stimulating discussion”. He recommends some really excellent free Poll tools and best practice on how to use them in the classroom.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Edf_Hx323E

At BETT 2009/10 we were “up in the Gods”, on the gallery section overlooking the Grand Hall. A sweet spot, but not too easy to find and not much space for Moby to bust out his moves.

Moby on our old 2010 BETT stand

For 2011 we’ve graduated to the ground floor of the Grand Hall, stand No.B60, right in the middle next to the stairs and the RM stand. It’s a modest sized space compared to some of the monolithic structures that surround us but we promise it will be one of the most social and fun stands you visit.

Each day we’ll be meeting lots of current and future BrainPOP Educators and demoing ALL the BrainPOP products and features, including BrainPOP ESL and BrainPOP Jr. Of course there will also be a scintillating array of BrainPOP goodies for you to take back to school to show off.

Here’s a few more reasons you should come and visit our stand:

• We’ll be joined by a number of VIBs – BrainPOP teachers (including Dawn Hallybone, Ian Addison, Tim Handley, Adina Popa, Tom Sale and James Mahoney) who have kindly given up a few hours to show how they effectively use BrainPOP in their classrooms, both 1-2-1 and presenting on our Interactive Whiteboard. They will have their own special VIB tshirts – keep an eye out for them as not only are they passionate about BrainPOP, they are great exponents of relevant and modern ICT practice.
• We’re hosting TeachMeet Takeovers at 2pm on Thurs/Fri (maybe Saturday too). This is when we hand the stand over to a real teacher who gives a presentation about free tools and services that they’ve used in the classroom. We’re honoured and priviliged to have the inspiring Alessio Bernardelli and Dan Roberts doing a tag team Takeover on Thursday about “Using Livestream to create and broadcast pupils work as a TV Show & Chicken Pecha Kucha 20×20 free tech tools” and the fantastic Bill Lord (who is a wonderfully infectious speaker) talking about “Amazing free tools to fire up literacy learners“. You do NOT want to miss these.
• Moby’s Photobooth – come and get a Polaroid portrait picture taken with the big orange fella himself, to treasure forever. His Photobooth will be open most of the show, except when he needs a break to oil his sprockets.
• BrainPOP Spotters! If you visit the BrainPOP stand, get a demo and pick up a special Moby shoulder bag make sure you proudly display it when you’re wandering around the exhibition. Why? Because at 2pm each day Moby will be wandering the exhibition hall looking for a BrainPOP bag. If he “spots” yours then you’ve won a full year’s subscription to the BrainPOP product of your choice. Woot!

BrainPOPpers will also be attending these events:

• Learning Without Frontiers (Drinks reception sponsor and general hob-nobbing – please grab a BrainPOPper if you see one and say hola).
• Collabor8 4 Change – Sponsor, Keynote and round table lead.
• TeachMeet BETT 2011 – Generally kicking back with lots of old (and hopefully new!) friends at this highlight of the educational calendar.

Find us where the little red box is:

The location of the BrainPOP stand at Bett 2011

]]> http://www.brainpop.co.uk/blog/2011/01/turning-it-up-to-11-at-bett/feed/ 2 http://www.brainpop.co.uk/blog/2010/01/back-from-bett-2010-part-1-sparking-conversations-the-vib-effect/ http://www.brainpop.co.uk/blog/2010/01/back-from-bett-2010-part-1-sparking-conversations-the-vib-effect/#comments Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:41:21 +0000 ChrisB http://www.brainpop.co.uk/blog/?p=1535 We firmly believe there’s no one better than someone who uses your product, day in, day out, to show it at its best.

We’ve just returned from attending the largest educational technology show in the world: BETT 2010. It’s an astonishing experience, where educational suppliers and teachers from all around the globe mingle for 4 days, looking at products, networking and attending CPD.

But teachers often mention the tension between commercial and classroom interests. Donald Clark, an educator from Brighton, describes a paradox of BETT, and more generally of technology in schools:

“On the whole, schools, and the teaching profession, have more than a whiff of anti-corporate attitudes. Teaching is often explicitly (not always) anti-private sector. This makes the market rather awkward, as there’s a lack of trust between sellers and buyers.“

Hedge your BETTs – the 7 paradoxes of technology in education – Donald Clark

That’s a pretty fair assessment. Sales people and Teachers don’t tend to mix, hence the “suspicion”.

Partly this is down to the way educational suppliers have directed elearning products towards schools over the years, partly due to the fact that “Schools often make bad, expensive choices and struggle to support the things they buy, leading to further suspicion” (Donald, again).

We know this. Every educational supplier knows this, deep down. Teachers are a tough crowd – and rightly so. You can also see tangential thoughts on Terry Freedman’s ICT in Education blog “7 things to do after the BETT show” and Tom Barrett’s post: “My Reflection on TeachMeet Takeover”

Can this divide be fixed? We know there are some extremely high quality pay and free tools, schemes and content out there. We know we have an amazing product in BrainPOP UK but how to convince “suspicious” teachers?

1. Build a trusted community. A “tribe” of BrainPOPpers. This takes time, authenticity and persistence. This is what we’ve been doing. This, hopefully, means you can move to…
2. Invite your community to participate.

We asked if a few BrainPOP UK Educators wouldn’t mind volunteering a sliver of their time to help show how they used BrainPOP  UK resources effectively in their classrooms on our stand at BETT 2010.

We knew their up to the minute experience of BrainPOP UK far outweighed any marketing messages or freebies we could provide.

As our VIBs arrived we kitted them out with their own Tshirts, as much orientation as we could fit into 5 minutes and got them talking to other teachers as soon as we could.

The effect was electric.

Once we’d introduced the VIBs they were away, excitedly telling classroom stories, explaining why their school bought BrainPOP UK and offering hints and tips we’d never thought of (ever considered using the letter that starts each movie as a lesson topic?).

At one point Tom Sale, a year 6 teacher and ICT Subject Leader from Blackpool, was demoing BrainPOP UK on the plasma TV to about 7 teachers at once, like he’d been talking about BrainPOP all his life. They knew he was the real deal and loved him for it.

But that’s the trick – you can’t substitute style (us, maybe) for substance (our VIBs, definitely). It’s also worth remembering that teachers are natural presenters. They spend their professional lives in front of a crowd. It’s called a classroom of kids.

The feedback from our VIBs was universally positive. We think they enjoyed seeing BETT from another point of view (and meeting Moby of course!) and, hopefully, went away richer for the experience.

“It was an honor to testify to the effectiveness of BrainPOP in the classroom at your booth. The positive energy and professionalism the team at BrainPOP UK projected were clear indicators of present and future success. It was a privilege to have been associated with you! Meeting the shiny Moby was also a highlight and am glad to have the pictures from this encounter

Thank you SO much for including me in this experience! It was awesome!!!”

Adina Popa, Technology Resource Teacher, Loudoun County Public Schools

Wouldn’t it be great if visitors to BETT could speak to teachers who love the product, not just sales people? The barriers would melt away. And if you can’t find your own VIBs then make better products and look after your community.

“Another highlight for me – was meeting Moby – I think the picture says it all. I was on the Brain Pop as a VIB – a Very Important Brainpopper! We use Brain Pop at school and in my class Tim and Moby are like another two pupils, I even went to the stand with a list of questions that my children wanted to ask! It was a great experience to meet other teachers and talk about a tool I use in my classroom”

Dawn Hallybone, BETT 2010

We’d invite them back to do it again like a shot. So thank you Ollie, Dawn, Thomas, Adina, Vickie and Annette VIB. You were stars.

We’ll leave the last word to the original VIB – Ollie Bray,  a deputy head from Scotland and LTS Advisor:

“I continue to be impressed by BrainPOP UK and its commitment to engage with the teaching profession. Not only do they make great movies but they listen to real feedback from real teachers so that they can constantly improve their products and services.

I was delighted to see the time and effort that the company has spent developing a detailed curriculum matching tool to link their movies to the Scottish Curriculum – You just don’t get this UK wide care and attention with some other companies.

It was an absolute pleasure to stand in for Tim (while he was on his lunch break) and be a VIB at BETT 2010”

BETT is the biggest ICT show in the world. Pretty much every ICT or elearning supplier will be there, including us, demoing our resources and much more on stand S46 (on the balcony above the main hall). We want to meet customers both old and (hopefully) new. Don’t be afraid to come and say hello – we’re not sales people, we just love BrainPOP UK and we think you will too.

Our BETT stand last year

An alternate view of our BETT stand last year

There’s a great collection of “Tips for BETT” going round on Twitter at the moment, providing pearls of wisdom to those who have not been before but we can add:

• Wear comfortable shoes. You will, cumulatively walk miles in a day at BETT. Plus there’s lots of presentations that may be standing room only.
• Don’t bring a bag. You will be offered bags on most stands. Get one of our bags instead – they will last and look very tasty. They will be the must have items at BETT we think
• Take a camera and photograph the stand name + number of memorable stands. This will make a big difference. Alternately, if you have video capability on your phone, ask the rep to do a 30 sec demo for you. Far more memorable than a flyer.
• Have a “who can bring the most useless “tchotchke” (freebie gift)  back from BETT” competition if you are travelling with a colleague or two.
• Drink lots of water to avoid the inevitable headache and try to grab lunch early or late to avoid the seriously packed cafeterias between 12pm and 2pm.
• Sign up to attend one of the FREE TeachMeet events – we’re proud sponsors; they are brilliant, fun and inspiring. But don’t just take our word for it – see for yourself.

We’re also writing a series of blog posts highlighting some of the things that we’ll be doing at BETT. Coming soon:

• Meet a VIB! – Teachers who use BrainPOP UK who have volunteered to show you on our stand how THEY get the best out of BrainPOP resources.
• Teachmeet Takeover – Teachers who will “takeover” a part of the stand to tell you about free tools they find useful in the classroom.
• BrainPOP UK lands on Promethean Planet – we’ll be demoing BrainPOP UK on the Promethean Planet stand.

If you come to our stand we’ll be doing demos; giving away Moby-tastic BrainPOP UK shoulder bags (proper bags designed to last and be re-used); pens (the archetypal and ever popular BETT staple); Moby head shaped mousemats; Moby “reward” badges and lots of other things. Make sure that we’re on your route!