Posts on “ Mixer ”

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

Recognize Earth Awareness month with BrainPOP’s spotlight and the Mixer! Our Earth Awareness spotlight includes environmentally friendly topics such as Wind Energy, Recycling, and Hybrid Cars to reinforce students’ understanding of what they can do to help our environment. We’ve even included lesson plans and games to further support this important topic. Once you’ve taken the time to explore our April spotlight, test your students’ earth awareness by creating a unique, BrainPOP quiz using the Mixer. Choose from hundreds of earth-focused quiz questions, or craft some of your own to customize and remix a quiz that meets the specific needs of your class. To get started, you’ll need a BrainPOP Educators account that is linked to your BrainPOP subscription. For tips and tricks on using this valuable tool, be sure to check out the Mixer screencast.

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!  

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»

BrainPOP Educators continue to submit interesting quizzes using the BrainPOP Mixer™ tool.   One of our recent favorites is from @jodonnell from Raymond W. Kershaw Elementary School in New Jersey, who created a “famous scientist” quiz prompting students to match an individual scientist with his or her invention or discovery.  What a cool way to use a multiple choice!  For additional creative ideas to use the mixer, check out these other user stories, or share some of your own in the Mixer user group!

With the large scale adoption of the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Mathematics, the education world is preparing for impending assessments beginning in 2014.  The 2014 assessments are being developed by two organizations: PARCC, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers  and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.  The exact formats for the assessments are currently undetermined as the organizations work with various stakeholders to create them.  However, we do know that the assessments will continue to include “selective response” or multiple choice and open-ended, “constructive response” questions that require students to share processes and demonstrate understanding in ways rarely measured before on standardized tests. Fortunately, BrainPOP’s Mixer™ tool allows you to find or create your own “open response” questions, perfect for capturing “evidence based” answers that are more difficult to assess via standard multiple choice.  Using the Mixer, you can explore pre-written open-ended questions by clicking the filter and selecting “open-ended,” or write your own.  Either way,  the open-ended question format can elicit higher order thinking from your students – the kind that will be assessed on the future tests. Looking for good question prompts? Take a look at the FYI section on each of our topic pages. Full of high-interest… 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.

Have you been using games on GameUp to help your students understand themes of this year’s election?  If so, you might be interested in two new quizzes that we’ve created specific to this year’s presidential contest.  First, is the all important Election Year Economics  quiz that ties right in to Budget Hero Election Edition.  With open ended questions about swing states and resource allocation, this quiz is sure to promote thoughtful dialogue with your students.  Want to quiz your students on other aspects of the election, you can always mix your own, custom quiz using the mixer.  With access to over 10,000 BrainPOP questions, and the ability to write your  own, it’s never been easier to customize your students’ BrainPOP experience.  You can learn how to use the tool by watching our quick overview video.   Also, searching for more election ideas?  Be sure to visit out “spotlights” page, join the election discussion group, or view our archived webinar with our friends from iCivics.

Guest Blogger and BrainPOP Educator Kara Wilkins is chair of the Social Studies Department at Hudson Memorial School in Hudson, New Hampshire. My name is Kara Wilkins. I have been teaching at Hudson Memorial Middle School , in Hudson, New Hampshire for fifteen years. I have spent a majority of that time as an eighth grade social studies teacher. For the last three years I have had the pleasure of chairing the Social Studies department as well. Our school purchased a full BrainPOP membership for teachers and students about five years ago and we have never looked back. I have incorporated BrainPOP into every facet of my teaching, from previewing a topic, reviewing a topic and my favorite, at home extension of topics being learned in the classroom. I am also constantly looking for meaningful ways to integrate technology into my classes to increase student engagement so when BrainPOP came out with The Mixer I knew this was going to become an integral part of my classroom routine. Over the years I have purchased various “quiz making” Web 2.0 Tools but I knew that BrainPOP’s would be great because my kids already knew the format, loved Tim and Moby and… Read the Rest»

Roosevelt Middle School educator Todd LaVogue recently received the first-place Educators Choice Award for his project “What’s Up Egypt?” during Microsoft’s Partners in Learning U.S. Forum. LaVogue is one of 16 U.S. educators who will attend the Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum in Prague, Czech Republic, in November.  My name is Todd LaVogue. For the past three years I taught sixth and eighth grade history at Roosevelt Middle School in West Palm Beach, Florida. I enter each unit of study with the idea of taking something the students know and enjoy and combining it with the material mandated by the state that should be taught during the unit. My students, in turn, create television shows, plays, public service announcements and music videos within our unit of study. In one of our more recent projects, my students researched and created an ancient Egypt Today show-style news program with news, weather, sports, cooking, lifestyle, historical and music segments. For example, the weather segment discussed the annual flooding of the Nile and how that was essential to life in ancient Egypt through the depositing of silt on the banks, fertilizing crops. We accomplished this by infusing technology into the curriculum. Using a… Read the Rest»