POPtalk

Jude recently had the pleasure of meeting Miss Donacien and the KS2 pupils at Wix Primary School. Here’s how she got on…

At Wix, I was lucky enough to have a whole assembly to find out what the kids in Years 3 to 6 thought of BrainPOP.

We started by talking about how BrainPOP movies are made and watched the Digital Animation movie where Tim tells us about this.

Once the movie finished, this prompted a discussion about how long movies take to make and how long BrainPOP had been around. I could tell from talking to these young BrainPOPpers they had already watched lots of movies but then I posed quite a hard question…

“What is the difference between someone who just watches BrainPOP movies and a BrainPOPper?”

Everyone thought hard and had excellent suggestions:

• Using BrainPOP at home
• Using BrainPOP to learn

Although both statements are true I thought I’d better explain the difference.

Everyone was surprised to learn I was a BrainPOPper before I even met Tim and Moby.

But how can that be?

“I am so very old,” I explained, “that when I was at school we didn’t have computers. But I used to love going to the library and using books to find out lots of interesting facts, just like BrainPOPpers do.”

However, there’s another important BrainPOP characteristic: I explained that one of the features of a great BrainPOPper is that they don’t just watch a movie and think, “That was interesting.” They watch a BrainPOP movie and think, “I’m going to do something with that information.”

Examples we discussed were watching the Filmmaking movie and then scripting and recording your own movie; watching the Roald Dahl movie before reading his books; or watching the Blogs movie before setting up your own blog.

I had already seen Miss Donacien’s class blog and it made me think what turned out to be true – Wix Primary school is full of BrainPOPpers!

Once I had explained what being a BrainPOPper meant the ideas flowed thick and fast:

• Use BrainPOP at home to research a topic you’re interested in
• Use BrainPOP to help younger or older siblings with their homework (everyone was surprised to hear that BrainPOP is used in secondary schools as much as primary schools!)
• Use BrainPOP with Mum and Dad so they can learn too

Assembly was soon over and there was just time for a quick recap on what makes a great BrainPOPper:

1. They love finding out information about lots of different things
2. They use the information they have found to go and do other interesting stuff

A couple of days later I saw that Miss Donacien’s class had been blogging again…this time about my visit.

As I suspected, Year 5 proved themselves to be amazing BrainPOPpers, not just finding out information, they used Purple Mash to make their own illustrations about what they had learned.

Will keep an eye on their blog to keep up to date with their adventures.

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This is the story of Moby’s first visit to a UK school.

It all started with a parcel that arrived at BrainPOP UK, for the attention of our resident robot. It contained a number of posters, fan mail, and intriguingly, a link to a video.

It seemed a year 5 class at Titchfield Primary had been set a homework challenge: pick a BrainPOP topic you’re interested in and write about it.

When we saw the video of what the kids put together – “Our BrainPOP Homework“ - we were blown away! It was incredibly creative work, made with joyful enthusiasm. Not something you’d usually associate with your typical homework assignment

Along with their homework we received quite a few letters and drawings, all addressed to Moby, all pleading with him to come and visit.

This got us thinking, why not? Moby had never visited a school before and who better to visit than the hard working kids at Titchfield?

So we squeezed into the Moby mobile and headed to the school. After a quick tour of the school we hid out in the staff room while everyone rolled into assembly.

They had no idea who was just about to walk in. Moby’s excitement circuits were in overdrive!

Miss Deane, our inside woman, peeked out of the assembly hall to give us a signal, and we marched right down the middle of Mr Bainbridge’s assembly.

We were pretty lucky as Mr Bainbridge didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seemed really pleased we’d chosen to visit Titchfield and even let Moby join in with the Assembly at times:

Next on the agenda was a few classroom visits. Moby met Year R first and enjoyed answering their questions.

When we visited Mr Howard’s Year 2 “Diamond Mine” classroom the kids were keen to know how Moby deals with the pressure of being famous. He loves it of course – he’s such an attention seeker.

Moby got a real kick out of meeting Year 1 – they had a castle and princesses in their book corner and BrainPOP and Purple Mash in the laptop corner. After lots of hugs we met Joe out in the corridor who got Moby’s autograph – the first of many that day!

After break we met Year 4 and Moby made sure to hand out a BrainPOP badge to each pupil – a certain teacher was particularly chuffed to get the Moby football badge.

We took class photos aboard the H. M.S. Titchfield moored in the playground and Miss Deane’s digital leaders did a fantastic job herding the classes in and out.

One thing we were particularly impressed with at Titchfield was that BrainPOP is being used throughout all year groups. From Reception to Year 6, every teacher and child was familiar with the site. Moby was particularly touched to receive a piece of writing from Tyrone, a reluctant writer in Year 1.

Our last port of call for the day was meeting the homework whizz kids in Year 5 (a.k.a. H.M.S. Astute) who had Moby signing autographs.

We presented Miss Deane with a certificate for Titchfield for being such an excellent BrainPOPping school.

We spoke to Miss Deane about their BrainPOP homework and here’s what she had to say:

Before we knew it, it was time to go back to BrainPOP UK HQ, but not before the Year 5 girls showed us a cheer they’d choreographed especially for Moby. Thanks girls!

Thanks to all the staff and students at Titchfield Primary for making us feel so welcome. We don’t think we could have picked a better school for Moby’s first visit…He wouldn’t stop beeping about it all the way home.

Read what Year 5 had to say about our visit: Our very special day

And here’s a collection of all our photos from the day: Titchfield Primary visit 

Moby also insisted we make a video of his “best bits” so here they are for your entertainment:

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We were invited to a presentation recently by Vickie Bacon, BrainPOP fan and VIB, at Hurstpierpoint College Prep School. She wanted to share something exciting that staff and students at Hurstpierpoint have been involved in: setting up a “Digital Pencil Case” scheme for Years 7 and 8 that used Apple mobile devices as the central technology.

An idea is born

It all began when Vickie attended an inspirational talk by an iPad “guru”. Maths teacher, Vickie, was convinced iPads could be extremely beneficial by giving the students freedom to learn and keeping learning relevant.

After discussions with the Headteacher and IT team, ICT was removed as a discreet subject in Years 7 and 8. Desktops and Macs which had previously been confined to an ICT suite were redistributed into classrooms and, with hard work from dedicated staff, all Year 7s were issued with an iPad on the first day of the autumn term.  ICT was brought under the umbrella of other subjects with relative ease.

The basics

Each iPad was handed over to the kids fresh out of the box. All the kids needed to get started with individual iPads were an email and iTunes account. They took them home and downloaded apps including: Keynote, Pages, Garageband, iMovie, Poplet, iBooks and iBookcreator.

Keeping ahead of the kids!

How were the children able to “buy” apps? Simple – apps were “gifted” to them. As Vickie repeated throughout her presentation – and was also demonstrated by children throughout the day – the real challenge for the teacher is to keep ahead of the kids!

“Learning boxes” were introduced to Year 7 and Year 8 lessons – these included mini boxes with a set of iPod touch devices and an iPad included in each. The teachers were each equipped with an iPad of their own for the summer break and attended a course to get them up to speed with the technology. The kids needed showing once then they were off!

Practical classroom application

Teachers introduced lesson plans with QR codes for the children to scan like this Michael Rosen Rap lesson:

The kids scanned the code at the top of the sheet with their iPod Touch, popped headphones in for a listen, and identified key features of the poem. If you use iOS devices in school we thoroughly recommend you trying it with a class, it was great fun!

We saw a great demonstration for using the ShowMe app: Vicki was able to show us one of her students working on a maths problem while she was teaching another group of students. It was fascinating as you could see the student’s thought process. Vickie could then use this student’s working as a lesson starter or plenary for another class. Live workings could also be emailed to the child’s record.

The world in your hands

One of the key factors before going ahead with this scheme was being able to trust the children. In school time, kids are restricted by the school firewalls but at home, they can access anything. Vickie likened putting an iPad in a 12 year old’s hands to putting the “whole world” in their hands. Teachers were COP trained and parents were also invited along to these sessions.

To keep on top of any misuse, teachers conduct random “iPad pulls” during lessons or during the school day in order to check the children’s history. Anything bad? They get a “black i”. If they get the all clear they receive a “rosy apple”

Parental engagement

Hurstpierpoint use WebDAV for updating student records and tracking progress. Parents have access to these records too. It all felt incredibly open and has proved an ideal set up for parental engagement. On WikiServe the kids can blog and podcast their work and the school uses a portal to keep parents informed. The parents can see everything their child is doing in school – awards, grades, etc.

Drama, Comic Life, and other iPad tools

After a short break it was time for the Year 7 kids to show us what they’d been up to. Harry did some “modelling” at the front of the class to demonstrate different statuses in drama before the kids were dispersed amongst the crowd to show us their classwork.

Olly showed our little group how easy it was to slot the dramatic poses captured on the iPad into a comic strip in Comic Life, adding speech bubbles and narrative descriptions. It soon became clear how cross-curricular their drama lesson was turning out to be, bringing in elements of English, ICT and Art.

Alessa then delighted with a presentation which showed the cross-curricular nature of their patterns project:

• An iMovie clip she’d made demonstrating patterns in Art;
• A Garageband rap for patterns in French;
• A poplet to show patterns in Maths and the Nth term;
• And then she used poplet to combine French, Maths and Art

The morning closed with an iBook presentation from Ellie. She and her classmates had recently visited the Apple Education Conference in London and she had created an iBook diary of their day with lots of photos and captions. Sterling work!

It was inspiring to see students present their work to a room full of strangers with such confidence and eloquence. And great to see iPads being used to their full potential in the classroom. But Hurstpierpoint have a team of dedicated staff who had clearly recognised the commitment required to get the most out of such a large investment. On top of that, the relations between the school, the students, and their parents was strong enough that the school clearly felt they could entrust students with these expensive devices.

Could it work in other schools? Let us know what you think!

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Jude, BrainPOP UK’s ELearning and Mobile Consultant, recently called on one of our subscribing schools. Here’s how her day went…

Ben Wood (a.k.a. @Referoo) has been a BrainPOPper for a year or so now and when he came to see us at BETT this year, he politely requested a t-shirt. I was all for popping one in the post but thought better of it – why not deliver it personally?

Ben was on board so on a bright afternoon I had the honour of visiting Menston Primary, where a very demanding BrainPOP focus group awaited me.

I met three separate Year 6 classes: Mrs Anthony’s, Mr Wood’s, and Mrs Gregson’s. It turns out that each class had already done some work thinking (and writing) about BrainPOP. We watched a couple of movies related to their lessons, Digital Animation and Hip-Hop and Rap, and in one class we completed the Smoking quiz together. We didn’t watch the Smoking movie as the class assured me they had watched it some time ago – they ended up getting an impressive 10/10!

I hope I showed them a trick or two they weren’t aware of. For example, they didn’t know that our February spotlight coincided exactly with the theme they were studying in school – Space.

The major part of the sessions involved students and teachers giving me some amazing feedback on BrainPOP (and very very strange team names).

What did they like?

• BrainPOP makes topics fun: “BrainPOP has good information not dull information,” said one young BrainPOPper
• Another student liked the way BrainPOP challenges them which can only be a good thing!
• I nearly fell on the floor when one very clever young chap told me that BrainPOP suited his style of learning as he was a visual learner – it turns out the class knew about styles of learning from when they studied the Brain earlier in the year
• Mrs Anthony liked the way difficult vocabulary is highlighted in the movies as sometimes this led to discussions, like the other day when the class discussed the word “appeasement”

By this point I wondered if I really was in a Year 6 class as everyone seemed so advanced!

BrainPOP at home

We discussed how the kids used BrainPOP at home in the evenings. Nearly everyone had an iOS device, or knew someone who did, and our free Featured Movie App got two thumbs up. Those who didn’t use the App tended to use the family computer.

Being able to watch movies at home was useful if you don’t catch everything when you watch it in class.

Was there anything they didn’t like? Not really! The jokes are a bit corny sometimes but they decided they could live with it.

There were lots of movie suggestions and quite a few students said they wanted to see more characters in the movies…especially girls. I pointed out the Cassie and Rita comics in the FYIs but the general consensus was that Cassie and Rita should get speaking roles. Watch this space for our Period movie coming later in the year.

Someone suggested guest appearances from other animated characters could feature in the movies. Bart Simpson anyone?

Image courtesy of http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/pictures/bart

What’s in a name?

I had a marvellous afternoon and left saying I would mention the group names of everyone I met. All the students compete against each other in groups and sometimes the BrainPOP quiz results feed into this score, so here goes…

Big up to…The Sugar Wangers, Girls R Us, The Epic Video Gamers, The Blue Devils, Marshmallow Horses, Meerkats with a Manicure, Angels Burgers, The Ninja Kiwis, The Banana Bandits, The Whizzy Wine Gums, The Pink Pandas, The Groovy Geeks, The Crazy Lemmings and the Lovely Loveheart Lovers!

Menston Primary is clearly a very fun place to learn.

Keep Up the BrainPOPping!

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