Posts on “ BrainPOP ”

Hollie Winfield is a second year graduate teacher working in Melbourne’s CBD. Her school is Carlton Gardens Primary School in Victoria, Australia. It is a multicultural school focused on educating students in an engaging manner that incorporates real life and innovative experiences. Her school recently presented to a collection of teachers from around Australia and overseas that were participating in the ISTE Australia Study Tour. Each classroom teacher demonstrated their use of ICT in their classrooms.  As a new BrainPOP user, Hollie shares her reflection below. I have started using BrainPOP as a tool for introducing my mathematics lessons. The short sharp videos are useful for engaging students in new concepts or consolidating prior knowledge before they complete a set task. I use my interactive whiteboard to display the videos and activities when I am working with the whole class, but sometimes the students themselves access the website using our classroom laptops or our school iPads. One example of a lesson in which I used BrainPOP involved a basic subtraction video that I played at the beginning of the lesson. My students are working at different levels with their subtraction understandings and the video touched on all of these in… Read the Rest»

As we reach the end of the year, we reflect on the developments and accomplishments at BrainPOP over the past twelve months. So here it is,  the top 10 BrainPOP highlights of 2012! 10) Few in New York City were spared the devastation of Hurricane Sandy this fall.  This included many employees at BrainPOP and our office space too. Even without electricity, running water or heat many members of our district relations, customer support and production teams all rallied to help each other and did their best to continue working with you too.  We made BrainPOP free for the week as many schools along the North East and Mid Atlantic coasts were closed. 9) On the second to last day of August, we were pleasantly surprised to see BrainPOP’s mobile apps featured on the Today Show in a segment entitled “Best Back to School Apps“  with former child star (and parenting expert), Soleil Moon-Frye! 8) BrainPOP attended and sponsored our first show in Australia - As part of the ISTE Australia Study tour, VP of 21st century learning, Kari Stubbs, presented at the prestigious ACEC conference! 7) The family of BrainPOP APPs including BrianPOP, BrainPOP Jr., BrainPOP UK and BrainPOP Español were downloaded over 2 million times! 6) GameUp™ continued gaining popularity with students logging… Read the Rest»

A new lesson ideas resource has been added to BrainPOP Educators! In it, you’ll find five unique ways that BrainPOP can be used to help students learn about holidays all year long. These ideas go beyond simple celebration tips: they challenge students to think critically about what people around the world celebrate and why. In this lesson ideas page, you’ll find ideas for having students generate and answer their own FYI questions related to a particular holiday, find out how you can empower students to research and debunk holiday myths, and learn tips for talking about stereotypes or common misunderstandings surrounding a holiday or its culture of origin. You’ll also discover ideas for year-long holiday journals that students can use to reflect on essential questions related to celebrations. Finally, you’ll access ideas for helping students compare and contrast holidays from various seasons and explore their connection to seasonal occurrences, and explore how various cultures express their beliefs and way of thinking through holiday celebrations. We hope these are teaching resources you’ll be able to use to enhance students’ English Language Arts (ELA) and social studies instruction all throughout the year as various holidays and seasonal celebrations arise. Please feel free… Read the Rest»

Tim and Moby are getting into the holiday spirit! Now through January 15th, save 20 percent when you purchase one of the 12-month Family subscriptions. You’ll have the chance to print or email a gift certificate letting your lucky recipients know. And remember, all our subscriptions now include mobile access.  For more information about the promotion, check out our promo page.  This discount only comes around once a year, so act now!

Guest Blogger and BrainPOP Educator Steve Isaacs share his methods for incorporating game design into his classroom.  You can find the post in it’s original form on Steve’s blog, games and learning Recently @techucation reached out to ask for some resources and ideas related to teaching Video Game Design and Development.  I responded to his inquiry and realized it would serve as a worthwhile blog post to share with the educational community.  Below is a general description of my 7th and 8th grade courses.  In 7th grade, I teach a six week introduction to video game design and digital storytelling.  In 8th grade I teach a full semester course in video game design and development.  I have also developed and teach the full semester course as an online high school course for The VHS Collaborative (http://thevhscollaborative.org/).  I hope you find the information helpful as I would love to see more courses evolve that teach important 21st century skills through game design. Currently, I am enrolled in the doctoral program in Educational Technology at Boise State University and the focus of my research is the pedagogical benefits of game design and development.  Some of the concepts I find most worthwhile to research… Read the Rest»

The Center for Game Science (CGS) is part of the department of computer science at the University of Washington. We’re made up of a group of designers, software engineers, artists, and students, including both PhD students and undergraduates in technical and educational fields. We have six games currently in development, and all of them targeted at different aspects of supporting measured and assessed learning through games. The Making of Treefrog Treasure: Our latest game is Treefrog Treasure. The game was designed to teach players how to place fractions on a numberline. The core group working on the game from the beginning included only 7-8 people, so we were really all involved in coming up with game design ideas. This means ideas were coming not only from game designers, but also artists, developers, and researchers in both Computer Science and Education. We went through a number of prototypes that were able to address our math goals but weren’t engaging enough for players. These prototypes included pinball-like games where players bounce/shoot a ball onto a numberline. Finally, we realized that a platformer game (think Super Mario Bros.™) where the character could stick to walls and jump into numberlines was the most engaging… Read the Rest»

Wednesday, November 7th at 3:00 PM ET- The Mixer and More In September, BrainPOP introduced the Mixer, designed to help you remix and create your own BrainPOP-style quizzes. Join us as we show you how to get started with this new tool and begin creating customized assessments that are tailored specifically to your students’ needs. We’ll also discuss the new ways BrainPOP Educators has simplified your search for relevant teaching resources and made your planning process easier.

Today is the big day, and BrainPOP is here to help your students understand everything about elections.  Our election spotlight page is a terrific portal to begin exploring. From Election Games  on GameUp, to our election lesson plans and teaching tools, you are sure to find valuable topics pages full of content to help build understanding of the many aspects of this historic election.  Want to share how you’re using BrainPOP resources, or learn about what others are doing?  Join our Election discussion group and participate in our community conversation.

The presidential election is just around the corner and GameUp has quite a few games that will engage your students while learning about the election process.  With a special election edition of “Budget Hero,” students will form a better understanding of the budget impact of President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney’s policies, as well as those plans championed by their running mates.  Additionally, our friends at iCivics have created some excellent election-focused interactive games that you can find on GameUp.  “Win the White House” takes students on the campaign trail to explore both the primary and general elections and the Electoral College.  Once they’ve secured the president’s seat, a round of “Executive Command” will give them the opportunity to exercise their power and learn about the day-to-day obligations of our nation’s leader. Not sure of where to begin?  All of our GameUp games have related teacher resources to support the use of these games in the classroom.  And, don’t forget to check out our election spotlight for additional games and movies that are linked to the election.

BrainPOP is once again a proud sponsor of the Global Education Conference (GlobalEduCon), a free week-long online event bringing together educators and innovators from around the world. This year’s conference is scheduled to run from Monday, November 12 through Friday, November 16, 2012 (Saturday, November 17th in some time zones). The entire conference will be held online using the Blackboard Collaborate platform. If you’ve ever attended a BrainPOP webinar, then you’ll be familiar with the format of each conference session. BrainPOP is supporting the conference strand dedicated to game based learning and game design. From Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) to Serious Games, the popularity and excitement about Game Based Learning is grounded in solid progressive educational philosophy. Studies upon studies have shown how game structures provide safe spaces for students to take risks, think strategically, and work hard. Online games are also a unique medium for communication, collaboration and teamwork. Have you used games to help your students better understand global issues? If so, there is a unique opportunity to submit a proposal to present at this year’s conference. We encourage you to submit and present, your session doesn’t have to be about BrainPOP’s GameUp, just about your effective use of… Read the Rest»