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27 Sep

Highlights from the Scottish Learning Festival

News and Views 1 Comment

After scoping out the festival in 2010 we decided to bite the bullet and book a stand at Scottish Learning Festival 2011. Aside from the prospect of haggis for breakfast and generally enjoying a jaunt north of the border, we had plenty of reasons to attend.

Let's get started!

1. Putting faces to names

We have a lot of friends and customers in Scotland and it’s always nice to put a face to a name. Cathy from St. Thomas’ R.C. Primary School made a big impression in her kilt attire so we made sure she took away a tartan badge or two to match

It’s also always nice to meet tweeps like @digitalkatie and @kirstyforbes. Always a pleasure, ladies! Kirsty was the lucky winner of 3 months free access to BrainPOP and a goodie bag. We hope you enjoy having Moby in your school, Kirsty!

Kirsty sports her winning certificate

2. Mapped to Curriculum for Excellence

We got to meet lots of Scottish teachers and show them Deep Beep, our curriculum matching tool. Deep Beep means you can drill down to the experiences and outcomes you wish to follow and find appropriate topics for your lesson in just a couple of clicks. All BrainPOP topics are mapped to Curriculum for Excellence and Deep Beep should help make lesson planning easy.

Moby loves to see a busy stand

3. Help with your evaluation

We know what it’s like to be bombarded with promotional literature and suffer information overload at these events so we wanted to create something to assist you. Proper evaluation of BrainPOP should involve your class if possible. The more colleagues and students helping with the evaluation the better. That’s why we created evaluation booklets - have your class help out.

With our evaluation sheet you let the kids check out the site, give you their honest feedback and you can use it to convince your Head Teacher or PT that BrainPOP’s worth an investment. Download the Evaluation Sheet here:

Click to download

4. Exceptional keynotes

We heard some truly inspirational keynotes and speaker sessions. Sir John Jones’ keynote, The Future Is Not What It Was, was a particular highlight. He received a standing ovation and even had some of the audience in tears. If you didn’t manage to catch him last week, we recommend you take the time to watch him now: Sir John Jones and other keynotes. Exceptional.

5. VIBs in the house

We know that it’s a thousand times more useful for you to talk to a fellow teacher so special mention has to go to our VIB (Very Important BrainPOPper), Mhairi Healy from Calderglen High School. Mhairi made sure that visitors to our stand heard first hand about how she uses BrainPOP with her class. Her unyielding enthusiasm and passion for teaching (and BrainPOP!) got straight to the heart of what really matters in the classroom!

Very Important BrainPOPper

We know there were lots of people posing for photos with Moby. If you took any pics please send them to info@brainpop.co.uk or post them to our Facebook page. We’d love to see some more and we’ll make sure you get some goodies for your trouble.

We’ll see you next year folks!

Now, where can we find a kilt maker used to working with robots?

Quick! I’ve only got 10 mins

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We were pleased as punch to be featured on Under Ten Minutes, a new blog venture set up to share videos demoing Educational technology…in under 10 minutes!

The idea is simply to post and share short video guides to any new tech you’re using in the classroom. So, among the BrainPOP’s of the world, there are also videos about using Prezi, Animoto, Wordle…all sorts of useful teaching tools and tips.

Anyone can make a video and upload it. There’s only one rule – no sales pitches allowed. Learn how to become a contributor to Under 10 Minutes.

So, without further ado, here’s BrainPOP UK in under 10 mins from one of our very own VIBs, Ian Addison. We couldn’t have done it better ourselves!

The magnetic power of technology

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This year at BETT we welcomed two International VIBs to join the BrainPOP team, Adina Popa (Technology Resource Teacher/International Ambassador, Loudoun County, VA) & Tammie Mihet (4^th Grade Teacher/Teacher Trainer, First Baptist Academy, Naples, FL). They have been using the American English version of BrainPOP in their classrooms for many years. We asked them to provide their unique perspective on the BETT event as a visitor, Collab8 4 Change keynote presenter, VIB and teacher.

Tammie (left), Moby (middle) and Adina (right)

“Do you want to see the latest and greatest technological advances in the education field? Do you want to rub shoulders with the brightest names in ICT? Then head to the BETT Show and come ready to be blown away.

That is what we did last week. Except we didn’t jump on a train to get there. We flew through the night, all the way from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, very eager to take part in the biggest ICT show in the world.

Our first impression when we walked in…overwhelming! Overwhelming not because it was confusing or disorganized, it was just the opposite.

Overwhelming because we felt like kids at Disneyland – so much to see, and so many activities in which to participate!

The real treat, however, was our involvement in the show. We didn’t fly all the way from the US just to experience BETT as visitors. We came to take part in it. We were VIBs – “Very Important BrainPOPers“. As VIBs we shared the power of BrainPOP with people from around the world. What an amazing opportunity we had to meet parents, teachers and school leaders and to share our passion for BrainPOP and its ability to drastically impact the learning of our students.

Through our encounters we showcased many features BrainPOP offers:

Research-based short videos that enhance instruction in any subject
Quizzes that are integrated with Promethean whiteboards and ready to be taken via personal response systems
Class charts with student responses that can be exported to PDF and graded accordingly
Extension activities through the FYI section
Closed captioning (subtitles to you guys!)
ESL lessons that teach English in a very stimulating environment

We also had the opportunity to attend and deliver a mini-note at Collabor8 4 Change, event held on Thursday evening, and sponsored by a few ICT leaders, including BrainPOP UK.

The layout of the evening was beautifully arranged. The opening address was provided by Lord Jim Knight, who mentioned that ICT needs to be quintessential to education. As we listened to Lord Knight we began to realize that, no matter which side of the Atlantic we call home, we are all facing similar struggles – economies are failing, schools are cutting budgets, and ICT integration is jeopardized.

It is, therefore, important that as innovators we lead the way in illustrating the importance of 21st century tools in educating our children. Throughout the evening we listened to lead educators who shared ideas on successful implementation of technology.

As a result of listening to these presentations, we created future collaboration plans between the two continents, and felt ready to implement many cutting-edge initiatives in our own schools.

The evening ended with two mini-notes, one delivered by us. Our theme centered on the fact that collaboration, especially at the international level, is becoming a necessity in education today.

It is required by our ever-evolving society, and its integration is essential in order to understand and respect our globally connected world. There are many ways to connect globally, and quite a few are offered through BrainPOP. From international competitions, to BrainPOP Educators, to POPtalk, students and teachers alike have a place to learn and share practices, lessons, and finished products. BrainPOP is a great catalyst in facilitating collaborations, and it is a good place to start collaborative activities.

As we reflect on our time at BETT two things are very evident:

There are some amazingly dedicated teachers and professionals out there working tirelessly to reach our kids
Technology has magnetic power; it can engage even the most obstinate learner

Personally we feel that BrainPOP is on the frontline, reaching out to teachers and students, and transforming the classroom into an engaging, 21^st Century environment. There is a saying that comes to mind when we think about the BrainPOP family: “Behind every great product there is a great team.”

Thank you, Adina & Tammie! We hope to welcome you next year as our favourite International VIBS

Joining the dots with the VIBs

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It’s traditional at BrainPOP to ask teachers to join us at BETT each year. We call them VIBs.

2011 was no exception. We welcomed more VIBs than ever before: Dawn Hallybone, Ian Addison, Charlie Deane, Tim Handley, Adina Popa, Tammie Mihet, Tom Sale , Mhairi Healy, Vickie Bacon, Patricia McLean and James Maloney . All passionate about embedding ICT into classroom practice and all BrainPOP fans. But how do we get such great teachers to volunteer their valuable time to help support BrainPOP?

Our Friday VIBs (clockwise from left): Jim Maloney, Tom Sale, Dawn Hallybone, Ian Addison, Charlie Deane, Mhairi Healy

In truth it’s a million small interactions but essentially it comes down to two things.

First and foremost, the concept of a VIB wouldn’t be possible if the BrainPOPpers didn’t place keeping our customers happy as our No.1 priority. That’s easy to write, and often claimed, but hard work in practice. Working with our Educators is KEY to the BrainPOP experience. Just having a great product isn’t enough these days. We’re a social business.

Secondly, teachers and parents can be just as passionate about an educational resource they use, as the iPhone they carry or the TV show they tune into every week. If you’re lucky enough to find and connect with those engaged customers then it’s important to give them ways (small or large) to express that.

So when you combine a real time, personalised & remarkable customer experience with an amazing product you can, if you’re lucky, invite your customers to collaborate with you. So we do. Having a close connection with our Educator network makes a substantial difference to the quality of the conversations and feedback we can have with teachers, and not just at BETT.

And that’s what VIBs do - metaphorically speaking, they join the dots for us.

Teachers are fatigued with sales people at exhibitions like BETT, bored with endless direct mail and dismissive of cold calling. The chance for one teacher to connect to another teacher, even if they don’t work directly with the same age range, makes a world of difference. It’s all to do with “domain expertise“, which even the BrainPOPpers cannot rival when it comes to talking about using BrainPOP day to day with pupils, and the power of word of mouth referral.

So we implicitly trust our Educators to support and represent BrainPOP. They are our Ambassadors and our Advocates. They simply are “Very Important” to us.

We’ll leave the final words to Jim Maloney, a Year 5 teacher and ICT Leader (and VIB!), from Blackpool:

Turning it up to 11 at BETT

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This will be BrainPOP UK’s 3rd year at BETT and this time we’re turning it up to 11.

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

Back from BETT 2010 part 1: Sparking conversations – the VIB effect

BETT 2 Comments

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?

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…
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”

Off to BETT 2010 part 4 – The V.I.Bs

BETT 1 Comment

It’s really important to BrainPOP to involve teachers and kids with what we do in any way we feasibly can. We benefit from listening and our users benefit from sharing. Simple.

We’re exhibiting at at BETT 2010 (Stand S46 on the upper balcony above the main hall) and it occurred to us that it’s a great time to meet some of our existing users, not just potential new ones. Twitter is great to keep in touch with teachers but you can’t beat face to face.

But how completely brilliant would it be if we could not only meet them but work with them too?

That’s when the idea of V.I.Bs came to us. “Very Important BrainPOPpers” who are happy to contribute their valuable time to BrainPOP UK.

So with this in mind we speculatively asked, on our blog and on our Twitter, if any of our users would be kind and brave enough to volunteer to join us on our BETT stand to demo their BrainPOP UK skills.

Well, we’re pleased as punch to say that some of you did. So each day at BETT we will have one or two proper, real life, honest-to-goodness BrainPOP UK teachers ready to wax lyrical about how they use Tim & Moby resources in the classroom. They’re not being asked to be sales people – just to show you how they use BrainPOP UK with their pupils.

Amongst the VIBs in attendance on the stand might meet:

Ollie Bray (Secondary, Deputy Head, Geographer and 2^nd place in Microsofts’ 5th Annual Worldwide Innovative Education Forum Awards)
Annette Iafrate (Secondary, Classroom teacher, Geography NQT, S1-6)
Vickie Bacon (Secondary, Maths and Enrichment specialist)
Tom Sale (Primary, Yr6 Class teacher, ICT subject leader)
Dawn Hallybone (Primary, Senior ICT Co-ordinator and the winner of the Special Achievement at the Hand Held Learning awards 2009)
Nicola Stables (Primary, Y3 teacher with Y5 & Y6 experience)

So if you are passing you may be lucky enough to catch one of our V.I.Bs. They’ll be wearing one of our exclusive black “Very Important BrainPOPpers” T-shirts and they’ll have some BrainPOP UK goodies to give out.

Off to BETT 2010 part 1 – A grand day out

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Like an Imperial Star Destroyer hoving into view to dominate the horizon the BETT Show 2010 is coming up next week.

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!

POPtalk

Highlights from the Scottish Learning Festival

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Quick! I’ve only got 10 mins

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Joining the dots with the VIBs

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Turning it up to 11 at BETT

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Off to BETT 2010 part 4 – The V.I.Bs

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Off to BETT 2010 part 1 – A grand day out

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