Posts on “ BrainPOP ”

BrainPOP Webinar: Beyond the Movies Wednesday, May 1 at 3:30 pm ET  We’re stepping up our monthly overview webinar and exploring resources beyond our movies. We’ll cover GameUp in the classroom as well as the Mixer, giving you the ability to customize assessment by creating and remixing your own BrainPOP-style quizzes. Plus, get a tour of all the recent updates we’ve made to BrainPOP Educators. Event Password: moby

Tim and Moby break down how to distinguish between truth and opinion in BrainPOP’s newest movie, Fact and Opinion. Students are presented with the concept that facts are supported by evidence that can prove the validity of the statement, while opinions are based on personal beliefs and judgements. They’ll also walk away from this movie understanding the difference between an informed opinion and an uninformed one, and how bias or conviction can blur the line between truth and fiction. The creation of this movie further expands our collection of content that supports the rigorous standards today’s students are expected to meet. Forming sound, evidence-based arguments and critiquing others’ claims are central components of the Common Core and the Next Generation Science Standards. These skills have broad academic and “real world” applications, from science to English to media literacy. A solid grasp of the difference between facts and opinions–as well as how facts must underpin informed opinions–is a building block for these habits of mind.

BrainPOP’s newest topic, ethics, provides an accessible, engaging storyline and a terrific entry point for students to frame and build skills focused on in the Common Core State Standards. Understanding the ethical dimension of reasoning will prepare students for critically evaluating a broad range of topics, from science and technology to history and literature. BrainPOP is making an strong effort to support implementation of the Common Core State Standards by creating new topic movies that consider changes in curriculum and performance based assessment. The Common Core standards for English Language Arts emphasize proficiency in making and evaluating arguments, problem-solving, and critical reasoning. Our ethics movie begins with age old questions – when you’re faced with a tough decision, how do you figure out what to do? What guidelines or examples do you use to make up your mind, and what happens when there’s more than one good way to act?  Tim and Moby offer some simple advice on what to do when you’re faced with tough choices about right and wrong, or good and bad. Students will consider some rules of thumb about ethical decision making, including ways to find a solution that does the most good while doing the least amount of harm. Ethics also primes students… Read the Rest»

Here are 5 ways to shine April’s BrainPOP spotlights Earth Awareness and Money Matters into your classroom. 1) April 22nd is Earth Day – have students explore the entire Earth Awareness Spotlight page. Follow this lesson plan and help them choose their cause. 2) April 15th is tax day! Help your students understand why the grownups are grumpy by watching the taxes movie during morning meeting, or playing Budget Hero on GameUp. 3) Though many US citizens are still struggling financailly, US stocks have recently hit an all time high. Help your students explore what it means to buy shares of a publicly traded company with our stocks and shares movie. 4) April 25th is World Penguin Day! Enjoy the penguin movie and learn some fun facts about our flightless feathered friends! 5) To solve the problems of Global Climate Change, global cooperation in the key. Help increase your student’s global awareness by participating in a meaningful global collaboration project! Check out this webinar with POPstar Lisa Parisi, of this list of links for some ideas to get started! These are just a few of the countless ways you can use BrainPOP and GameUp Spotlight content with your students. Share… Read the Rest»

It’s with pride and excitement that BrainPOP has released a new app for Windows 8 and its sidekick Windows RT for use on mobile devices such as the Microsoft Surface.  Our Windows app highlights the “tiled” beauty of the operating systems, incorporating an elegant look into the topic search and quiz features, while providing a gorgeous two toned blue sunburst background. It’s simply pretty to look at! The Windows app is available free of charge and provides access to the featured movie of the day. Featured movie topics tie in to current events, historical milestones and figures, holidays, and more! Additionally, current site subscribers can log in directly from the app to access all of BrainPOP’s award-winning content at no additional cost. This is a great benefit for school subscribers who want to provide access to BrainPOP content on Windows device that students may have at home! So, if you’re using Windows 8, download the app from the Windows 8 store and let us know what you think! After all, “the more you know, the more you know!” (and the more we want to know!)  

Join the POParrazi We are excited to be in Austin, Texas, this week for the 2013 TCEA Conference.  If you’re at the conference, stop by Booth # 1717 to take your picture with Moby and participate in our #mobyandme POParrazi photo collection!  While you’re there, find out about the latest developments at BrainPOP, including the mixer, new Educators pages ,and a special first glimpse of new teacher and student accounts!   BrainPOP is also featured in the conference program – our own Arturo Guajardo will present BrainPOP Basics and Beyond Thursday, FEB. 7th from 12:30 – 1:20pm in the Hilton ROOM 406. See you there!  

Just this week, we’ve quietly rolled out a new group of support pages on BrainPOP Educators.  We have created game specific  pages to help support your implementation of GameUp games in class! Every GameUp page has a lesson ideas button. Click the button to find lesson plans, graphic organizers, videos and implementation strategies all geared toward the specific game. With unique pages for each of the almost 60 games on GameUp, you’ll find the most useful implementation content to help you begin  incorporating game based learning into your teaching! Over the last year, our goal has been to make a more friendly BrainPOP Educators experience, and reduce the amount of searching you need to do to find the resource that you want.   We hope you find these new pages useful!  We’re always eager for feedback so please leave your ideas or suggestions in the comments section below.  

GameUp keeps growing!  Just this week, we’ve introduced 5 new games, including our first music game, from partner State of Play, called One Man Band. All you do is drag and drop instruments anywhere on the screen to build a crazy contraption and create your own tune.  From partner Hooda Math we welcome another instant classic, Ice Cream Truck! This game provides an opportunity to unleash your inner entrepreneur and exercise your budget skills as you buy materials and price your ice cream cones accordingly.  Build-a-Body and Build-A-Tree are excellent interactive simulations from game partner Spongelab. Whether you are a surgeon transplanting inner organs, or a arborist designing a maple tree to survive in different seasons, these simulations put you into the shoes of knowledgeable professional!  What Plants Need, also from Spongelab, explores the combination of light, water and air that plants need to survive. We are thrilled to continue building game offerings on GameUp. Keep checking our blog and be the first to hear news about games and developments at BrainPOP!

BrainPOP’s GameUp offers two online math games from Manga High to help students sharpen their geometry skills for free! Pyramid Panic is a geometry game set in Ancient Egypt. Players have been prematurely mummified and entombed within a pyramid, and must use geometry skills to build a path across the voids and escape. Our Pyramid Panic lesson plan explains how to use this game to help upper elementary and middle school students understand basic geometry concepts related to circles, polygons, and triangles, and apply those understandings to real-life situations. A Tangled Web features a spider named Itzi. Players must climb the clock to help Itzi rescue his family by solving cunning angle puzzles which reveal a path through each level’s maze of tangled webs. The lesson plan for A Tangled Web shares ideas for using the game to teach students in grades 3-8 about angles, parallel lines, polygons, triangles, circles, and other geometry concepts. There are over a dozen other free math games in BrainPOP’s GameUP. Let us know what you think in the comments!

Every January, the big players in the consumer electronics industry gather in Las Vegas to share the newest innovations and developments. From collossal TVs to networked “smart” home appliances this yearly event exhibits products that were once dreams of science fiction. For the past four years, Living in Digital Times and Children’s Technology Review have use the Consumer Electronics Show as the place to present the KAPi Kids at Play Awards, honoring the best of the best in children’s technology. This year’s KAPi Award winners were selected from a pool of over 700 apps, video games, toys and other commercial digital products designed for children, as well as individuals who have make their mark in the world of children’s tech. BrainPOP is thrilled that GameUp was selected to receive the award for Best Educational Technology! We’ve put a lot of effort into curating GameUp, to be the best digital learning game network, so we believe the recognition is well earned (and we hope you do too!) We’re even more thrilled to be included in the company of so many other terrific digital learning products such as LittleBits, Kinect Sesame Street, Kindle Fire HD Freetime, MakerFaire and Toca Boca. Thanks again… Read the Rest»