POPtalk

Wednesday 5th December at 16:00 (GMT) ”Using BrainPOP with other web tools”

This session sees Jude Baker team up with Andrew Gardner, Senior Manager of BrainPOP Educators, our online community of over 210,000 teachers.

After a brief overview of BrainPOP UK, Jude and Andrew will share insights gained from teachers the world over about creative technology integration. You’ll see how to get the most out of BrainPOP by taking advantage of free web resources such as Edmodo and Socrative with the aim of giving you the tools and strategies needed to implement best practice in your own 21st century classroom.

Andrew Gardner has more than a decade of experience teaching and integrating technology with young children and is based at BrainPOP HQ in New York. He has been named an Apple Distinguished Educator, Google Certified Teacher, and has presented internationally from New York to Mumbai on a range of timely education topics.

We’re really excited he can join us for this webinar and we hope you can too!

How do I sign up for a webinar? Keep an eye on this page for the live links. These will take you to Eventbrite where you can register quickly and easily. You’ll receive an email confirmation from Eventbrite including the link to the webinar which you click when the time comes.

I’m not a BrainPOP subscriber, can I still participate?  Of course! Our webinars are open to anyone interested in sharing best classroom practice and innovations in education. We do, however, recommend you take out a free trial in advance of any webinars so you can fully participate and contribute to any discussion: Take out a free trial. If you’ve considered taking out a trial or subscribing, the webinar could be just the guide you need to inform your decision.

Do you take webinar topic suggestions? Happily! Post comments below or email info@brainpop.co.uk and we’ll add it to the list for consideration.

Related Posts:

• Spotlight on…Super Structures
• WEBINAR: The BrainPOP Basics
• Back to school? Three reasons to bring on BrainPOP!
• Freshly updated for London 2012
• Spotlight on Health & Fitness

And the gold medal goes to…Tim and Moby!

We’ve freshly updated our Olympics movie for 2012, which comes complete with a POPquiz, FYI, and Activities, and we’ve made it free for July and August.

In the movie, Tim and Moby introduce you to the history and traditions of the Olympic Games and talk about the start of the modern games. You’ll learn how and where the Olympics began, including what the first event was, and what the winner took home (hint: it wasn’t a gold medal)!

You’ll discover why the games were abolished for a time, when and why they were revived, and when women were first allowed to participate.

See how the Olympics promote peace and harmony among nations, and learn just what those rings on the flag symbolise.

You’ll also learn about origin of the Olympic torch and its world journey to a new host-city every four years.

Now, where is it headed for this year again? It must have slipped our minds

Other freebies:

• Olympics paper pals
• Teacher Activity Keys

Related Posts:

• Olympics Topic Activities – Low impact exercise for maximum results
• Resources to inspire the TES teaching community
• Spotlight on Health & Fitness
• Olympics Paper Pals
• Spotlight on Reboot, Recycle, Reuse

From brushing up on sports history and cycle safety to learning how to eat well and stay safe in the sun, we’ve got health and fitness covered from top to toe with this themed collection of educational movies and resources: Spotlight on Health & Fitness.

On the Spotlight page you’ll also find an Olympics Activity, a Muscles FYI, a Fitness POPquiz, and a host of topics including…

• Asthma
• Bicycle Safety
• Body Weight
• Diabetes
• Fitness
• Football
• Human Body
• Metabolism - NEW!
• Muscles - NEW!
• Nutrition
• Obesity - NEW!
• Olympics
• Sun Protection

Also, feel free to download these Healthy Living Lesson Tips & Ideas from our good friend and ICT virtuoso, Jon Audain. If you have a Promethean whiteboard, download our Healthy Living flipchart from our Promethean Resource page.

Related Posts:

• Freshly updated for London 2012
• Spotlight on…Weather or Not?
• Spotlight on…Managing Your Money
• Lesson ideas and activities for Starship BrainPOP
• Spotlight on Healthy Living

If you have a passion for education, in any which way, shape, or form, you will undoubtedly have heard of the Times Educational Supplement.

If you’ve checked out their fabulous website you may also have happened along the Resources section. A section spilling with over 300,000 teaching resources, all ready and waiting for you to download…for free.

The best news is it’s growing. 

TES is always looking for teaching materials that can enhance the resource bank and inspire the teaching community. They are working with more and more content partners, helping them engage with the largest network of teachers in the world.

At BrainPOP, we know our content is quality assured, teacher, parent and child approved. So when we were presented with the opportunity to partner up with an organisation such as the TES to get our quality resource into the hands, homes, and classrooms of even more people, we jumped at it.

BrainPOP is an official TES Teaching Resources partner. It might not mean a lot to the folks already using BrainPOP but we like to think that it will get BrainPOP under the nose of lots of teachers who haven’t stumbled across our most excellent resource yet.

We’ve included 21 permanently free movies, our Swine Flu movie, September 11th topic, and a selection of other downloadable teacher-made resources including Promethean flipcharts, Smart notebooks, lesson plans and powerpoints.

If you do a quick search for “BrainPOP” on TES, here’s what you’ll find at the end of the rainbow.

Quite a pot of gold we reckon and we have every intention of building on the resources available in future.

If you click on any of the resource links, you’ll find a POPbox which plays the topic movie within the TES site, and also links to the movie, quiz, FYI and activity on BrainPOP, all available for free. Here’s an example resources page:

If the free movies aren’t quite what you’re looking for, have a quick search on BrainPOP to see what comes up. You’re also likely to find some other gems on TES to spark your interest.

With BrainPOP and TES resources in your teaching arsenal we’re sure you’ll find something!

Related Posts:

• Freshly updated for London 2012
• Life just got a tiny bit easier…all our free stuff in one place!
• Olympics Topic Activities – Low impact exercise for maximum results
• Spotlight on Reboot, Recycle, Reuse
• Getting organised with BrainPOP

This month’s spotlight is one for the geography fans with resources and topics from the troposphere, stratosphere, and even the thermosphere: Spotlight on Weather or Not?.

Topics included:

• Climate Types
• Clouds
• Earth’s Atmosphere
• Humidity
• Rainbows
• Seasons
• Snowflakes
• Sun
• Temperature
• Thunderstorms
• Water Cycle
• Weather
• Wind

You’ll also find a Water Cycle Quiz, Snowflakes Activity (’tis the season after all!) and Thunderstorms FYI.

Plus, we’ve got a Hurricanes Activity and Thunderstorms Graphic Organiser for you to try.

Click to download

Click to download

If that’s not enough to be getting your meteorological teeth into, here’s a link to further weather-related activities you can try with your pupils.

Related Posts:

• Spotlight on Health & Fitness
• Spotlight on British History
• Spotlight on…Managing Your Money
• Spotlight on Reboot, Recycle, Reuse
• Spotlight on…BrainPOP Safari

Last year we had a jolly old Halloween time wearing FrankenMoby masks and carving Moby pumpkins.

This year, to celebrate the fact we have an awesome new Halloween movie, we thought we would deliver some treats (no tricks!) for you to enjoy once again.

Ever wonder why we wear costumes on Halloween? Well, watch our new movie and you’ll find out in no time! Tim and Moby will teach you all about the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, and how it inspired today’s Halloween traditions. You’ll also learn about the Christian holidays of All Saints Day and All Souls Day, and why they were created.

Finally, you’ll discover the origins of fun Halloween activities like bobbing for apples, trick-or-treating, and carving pumpkins. Don’t be scared - watch this movie!

Watch the new Halloween movie

Last year, it was all about the FrankenMoby mask but this year we’re vamping it up with Tim! Download and cut out for a Halloween look with a BrainPOP twist:

Click to download, print off, and cut out!

If you’re feeling a little more monstrous this Halloween, meet FrankenMoby. He’s not scary, he’s just misunderstood.

Click to download, print off and cut out!

And if you’re anything like us guys, you’ll be keen to get flexing those pumpkin carving muscles this weekend but why be ghoulish? We’d go for a Moby pumpkin over a demonic pumpkin any day – he’s just that little bit more…orange! Make sure to get an adult to help.

Click to download and print off!

We’d love to see your BrainPOP Halloween pics! Whether you have a go at carving a pumpkin or pop a mask on to freak out your friends, post your photos to our Facebook page and we’ll make sure to send you some goodies (some of which may come in Halloweeny orange would you believe?).

Related Posts:

• FrankenMoby – He’s alive!
• POP! What was that scary noise?
• Pumpkin Moby
• Welcome to the brand new BrainPOP UK blog – POPtalk!
• WEBINAR: Using BrainPOP with other web tools

Looking after yourself needn’t be hard work. We’ve gathered together our best PSHE and Science activities, movies and more for a run down on how to prevent getting run down.

On the Spotlight homepage you’ll also find a Flu & Flu Vaccine FYI, a Fitness Quiz, and Lesson Tips & Ideas from a very good friend of BrainPOP and ICT virtuoso, Jon Audain.

The Healthy Living collection of topics includes:

Addiction

Blood Pressure

Body Weight

Diabetes

Fitness

Flu & Flu Vaccine

Food Safety

Immune System

Nutrition

Organic Food

Sleep

Smoking

Sun Protection

If you have a Promethean whiteboard, download our Healthy Living flipchart from our Promethean Resource page.

Related Posts:

• A spotlight on Spotlights – coming in 2011
• Spotlight on Travel
• Freshly updated for London 2012
• Spotlight on Health & Fitness
• Spotlight on Ideas that Changed the World

You may have noticed that we’ve been working hard in 2010 to add new features and topics like Subtitles and FYIs to the site.

Our new Spotlights for 2011 showcase a diverse range of BrainPOP UK topics that we hope will inspire and support your lessons. Here’s a sneak peek to help you plan in advance.

Looking after yourself needn’t be hard work. We’ve gathered together our best activities, movies and more for a run down on how to prevent getting run down.

Be a first class digital citizen! Tim & Moby guide you through the dos, the don’ts, the whys and the whats in this great collection of ICT topics, activities, and printable materials.

Hop on the BrainPOP time machine to learn about ancient cultures, architecture and myths.

We look at some of the most significant inventions and discoveries of all time with this great collection of topics and resources. Plus, we’ve included the people with the ideas on POP Spot.

Never Eat Shredded Wheat. With this collection of topics and resources, you’ll never get lost (we hope!)

Head on safari with Tim & Moby (without the fear of being eaten by lions) and enjoy these animal-related topics, activities and resources.

In the meantime, check out the Spotlights from this year for some lesson inspiration. If you’re a school subscriber keep an eye out for the Spotlights calendar we’ll be sending out in the New Year. We didn’t want to send it before Christmas – Santa’s got enough on his plate with all this snow as it is!

Related Posts:

• Spotlight on Healthy Living
• Spotlight on…Weather or Not?
• Spotlight on Digital Citizenship
• Green screen fun and short, short stories
• Protecting the Environment

This Protecting the Environment worksheet should help you think about the ways humans can damage the environment and how to stop this happening.

Related Posts:

• Spotlight on Extreme Environments
• It’s hard living here!
• Spotlight on Healthy Living
• A spotlight on Spotlights – coming in 2011
• Spotlight on…Making Movies

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

Topics for the Super Structures Spotlight include:

• Architecture
• Bridges
• Building Basics
• Calculus
• Dams
• Force
• Gravity
• Measuring Angles
• Pulleys
• Seven Wonders
• Skyscrapers
• Slope and Intercept
• The Great Wall of China

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

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!

We'll get wet if it rains

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.

3. Get building!

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

Super effort Zoe!

4. Spotting super structures

Fancy some fun outside of the classroom? Here’s our suggestion…

Why not 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:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/djof/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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 our Facebook and Flickr profiles.

Related Posts:

• WEBINAR: Using BrainPOP with other web tools
• Get Cubed Competition
• Freshly updated for London 2012
• Spotlight on Health & Fitness
• Resources to inspire the TES teaching community