POPtalk

We heard, via Twitter, that Ian Addison was initiating a “Digital Leaders” program, giving kids more responsibility over the ICT in school. A task the digital leaders were charged with was to promote use of the school’s ICT products to the teachers, one of which was BrainPOP.

Digital leaders sounded like a fascinating and empowering initiative so we invited Ian to do a short guest blog:

“At my school there are a lot of jobs for the ICT Coordinator to do. This can range from serious events like planning the ICT curriculum and ordering software to the day-to-day tasks like adding photos to the school website or updating the blogs.

At my school, we have a group of children who help with some of these jobs. They are known as the digital leaders and they range from year 3 to year 6 (after Easter we will be ‘employing’ some year 1-2 children as well) and they write blog posts, run ICT clubs and test new software for me.

Example jobs might be:

• Running 3/4 or 5/6 ICT Club
• Blogging for our outdoor curriculum
• Updating pictures on the website
• Updating pictures on the TV screen in the reception
• Setting up a webcam at lunchtime for us to watch animals in Africa

At our last inset day, the children ran a few workshops which included showing teachers how to blog, how to create photo slide shows and how to use BrainPOP UK. The children planned the session and Matthew in Year 5 has written a few words about his experience…

“We showed teachers what the government recommends for children in primary school should be learning. Also we showed them the variety of different subjects. They all loved BrainPOP! Also my favourite video is teeth because it gives you loads of knowledge about teeth. To improve you could do different, like you could add cooking and other stuff and not just do the main subjects. I think BrainPOP is an outstanding way to learn!”

You can read more on Ian’s Digital Leaders project on his blog.

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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

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We thought we’d give you a little preview of exactly what you could win when you enter our Making Movies competition.

Both Primary and Secondary winners will receive a Flip Mino HD 3rd Generation video camera with 60 minutes recording and 4GB storage.

In addition to the camera, the winner or the 7-11 category will receive the Top 10 Family movies of all time on DVD (as voted by Radio Times readers in August 2010).

• E.T.
• The Jungle Book
• Back to the Future
• Shrek
• The Wizard of Oz
• Toy Story
• Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
• Mary Poppins
• The Sound of Music

As well as the camera, the winner of the 12-16 category will receive the BFI’s Top 10 British films on DVD. We’re also throwing in the book, screenplay or play. These include:

• Great Expectations
• The Red Shoes
• Kes
• The Third Man
• Brief Encounter
• The 39 Steps
• The Bridge on the River Kwai
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Don’t Look Now (We know this could be slightly controversial as a prize but we’ll leave that up to your discretion – if your entry wins, you can opt out of receiving the DVD and book and pick another film from the BFI Top 100 instead.)

Good luck!

Competition Terms & Conditions

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Tuesday took us to Shropshire for a special event -  ICT @ the Heart’ Using Technology to Support Learning ICT & E-learning Conference.

We met teachers from across this diverse area, which stretches from North Wales and across into the West Midlands, through urban and rural, large and small schools.

We were invited by Steve Beard, who has been a long time fan of BrainPOP UK, and who we really wanted to do something special for.

Shropshire schools were given a great deal and their own sign up page, partly because Steve was so keen to promote what we offer to his schools.

So, in many ways this was the ideal event. A friendly advisor, some lovely goodies to give away, teachers who were keen and excited to see new resources, and a fanstastic resource to tell them all about!

Even the total lack of access to the internet (the only requirement to use BrainPOP UK!) did not dampen our spirits too much! The hotel had changed their set up without telling anyone and the wi-fi did not reach to the rooms we were in! However, our 3G dongle just about got enough signal (in a signal blackspot!) to display enough of our lovely site to show vistors to our stand. And that we did. It was nice to be able to have deeper and more supportive discussions with teachers about their needs than is possible at an event like BETT.

BrainPOP UK is still one of the new kids on the block, and although there were lots of other suppliers there, most of them have been around for ages, and we benefitted from the fact that our material is fresh, engaging, constantly refreshed and growing.

Apart from raising awareness of our site and the special offer to Shropshire schools (which is why we were there), we  were lucky enough to hear John Davitt and Andy Black talk!

If you haven’t seen these guys talk, then you really should try! John’s oblique humour and gentle delivery contains highly practical, inspirational and informative support that really seemed to get the delegates at this event scribbling away, noting down ideas, and urls. Andy brought us the challenges and opportunites of the technology – from the kids point of view – and reminded us of our obligation to make the most of what is before us. But,  Andy rarely does things in a ‘normal’ way – as you can see from his use of a table cloth as a projection screen.

We also gave away a load of prizes, including a whole class subscription for a year to Prees Primary School!

Thanks to Eileen from the ICT team for making sure we picked the winner fair and square!

I presented a BrainPOP UK bag with the subscription certificate, a rare BrainPOP UK mug, badges, and a Cadbury’s Cream Egg to Gareth from the school.

He was a very happy man!

Thanks to Steve, and all the ICT team for inviting us and to all the delegates for making us so welcome.

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On Wednesday 8th July 2009 we attended our first local Oxfordshire LA event – the Harnessing Technology across the Curriculum conference at the impressive Frank Williams F1 conference center.

And...they're...off!

“This free event will showcase the exciting ways that teachers and pupils are using technology to enhance learning and teaching across the curriculum in Oxfordshire primary, secondary and special schools.

The programme includes seminar sessions presented by teachers using the Oxfordshire Learning Platform and other technologies in schools, and exhibition stands from major educational ICT suppliers.

Attendees also are able to visit Frank Williams’ famous museum of over 40 Formula 1 racing cars at the Centre. “

Smaller events like these couldn’t be further from the giant BETT type shows. We think it’s important to try to do both.

At BETT you get lots and lots of visitors. It’s hard to catch your breath if you’re running a stand. It’s rare a stand attendee doesn’t go home without strained vocal cords and blisters. Teachers tend to hunt in packs at the big trade shows so often you’ll be demoing to 3 or 4 people, sometimes even a crowd, and be up against the noise all around you.

At local events like this you get much more opportunity to do one on one time with teachers. As there are only a handful of suppliers to go round they can take their time.

Oddly enough we found that teachers who came to see us and fell a little in love with BrainPOP UK didn’t tend to sign up for free trial on the spot like they do at larger trade shows. But we’re fairly confident they will when they next sit down at a PC.

Potentially this was simply because it was nearly the summer break. We also think a local show is simply less focused on selling (at BETT it’s expected behaviour to be scanned for evaluations or entered into competitions etc) so there’s no pressure to sign up to anything. As the conversations are more in depth there’s much less chance of forgetting.

Events of this type are less explicitly commercial (there were a number of local schools displaying their ICT adventures in amongst the suppliers). The stands weren’t shouty and glossy. All the stands were very similar – they simply implied “Pop over and have a chat”.

Which suited us just fine. The feedback we got was fantastic and I dare say we’ll soon be welcoming some Oxfordshire schools to the BrainPOP UK family in September. Some highlights:

• Meeting Nick Speller and James Bird from the Oxfordshire ICT Advisory team – thanks for looking after us and making us feel so welcome, guys!
• The whole BrainPOP UK team got a chance to see Dawn Hallybone do her thing in her “Game based learning in the Classroom” seminar, using Nintendo DS consoles to deliver real demonstrable value in the classroom. Talk about hyper engaging teaching tools. If you ever get a chance to see her present on this topic we highly recommend it.
• The Sonning Common School radio seminar (their kids went home with lots of Tim and Moby stickers – are there any kids who don’t want stickers?) and have uploaded a blog post here with some great photos: SCPS Radio @ the ICT Conference .
• Katie from 2Simple was there and she’s always a pleasure to hang out with.
• The dozens of pupils who ravaged our stand for free goodies and a chance to watch Tim and Moby movies. My personal highlight was when a teacher gathered her pupils and asked them to venture forth and visit every stand and report back to her what they’d seen and what they’d like to use in school. Immediately, and almost in synchronisation, they shouted “BRAINPOP!“. Brilliant.
• The F1 Museum – not my cup of tea but others on the team couldn’t believe their luck. There was even talk of a Tim and Moby F1 movie!

Louise gets all a-flutter at being so close to a real F1 car

PS: You can see an overview of the event by checking out the Twitter search on the conference hash tag “#oxict09“. If you are not sure what a hash tag is it’s worth reading this article on hash tags.

Nick Speller told me over a coffee that the Oxfordshire ICT team are trying to popularise #oxteach to create a living, breathing way of highlighting all interesting conversations around what’s happening with ICT in Oxfordshire. Even though it’s still very early days with this we say bravo! As we are based on Oxford we will also use this tag where we can.

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