Posts on “ assessment ”

BrainPOP’s Allisyn Levy shares her experience integrating assessment into game-based learning. For a long time, I was on a hunt for an amazing English Language Arts game that tied into curriculum and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). A big part of my role at BrainPOP® is vetting games for GameUp®, our online games portal. I focus a lot on working with teachers and students to play-test new games and features so we can shape our offerings to meet our audience’s needs. For months my search continued, and for every huge handful of games we saw, only one or two were really gems. We did discover some outstanding Language Arts games, including Classroom Inc.’s TSN2, Learning Games Network’s Quandary, and many of the iCivics games, all featured on GameUp. But we started to realize that you can actually tie digital games across all subject areas into English Language Arts (ELA) using assessment. In one of my favorite student challenges, I ask the class to create a “cheat sheet” or walk-through. This involves the kind of 21st-century skills the CCSS focus on, both in terms of ELA and literacy in the content areas. Quality digital games are a powerful way to teach the formulation of evidence-based arguments, for… Read the Rest»

Wednesday, January 16th at 3:30 PM ET- Customized Assessment With the Mixer If you missed our past Mixer-themed webinars, we’ve got you covered in this hour-long look at our newest tool. Designed to let you create and remix your own BrainPOP quizzes, the Mixer makes it possible to tailor assessment for all your students’ needs. We’ll share ideas and best practices so you can start mixing it up with this valuable teaching resource.

Wednesday, September 19th at 4:00 PM ET- Assessment with BrainPOP and Acuity We welcome Laura Agrusti of McGraw Hill/CTB as she joins Andrew Gardner, Senior Manager of BrainPOP Educators, for an overview of our collaboration with CTB. They’ll discuss how to use the results of Acuity assessments to differentiate instruction and assign targeted BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr. movies and quizzes. You’ll see how to gain a better understanding of students’ individual needs through the use of Acuity resources.

The new Mixer™ – which lets you remix, customize and craft  your own BrainPOP-style quizzes – is already receiving glowing reviews!   After this week’s overview webinar, members of the BrainPOP Educators community shared their positive reactions. @lwolfe puts it simply: “I love the Mixer!!”  @ccentra raves: “This will help me customize the quiz for each student!”  @sturpin asserts the ability to “customize quizzes will enhance the assessments of standards that we are using in our classrooms.” So have you tried the Mixer yet?  Have you explored our 9,000+  multiple choice and open ended questions?  Have you had the thrill of creating differentiated quiz experiences for your students? What are you waiting for?  Remember that in order to use the Mixer, you’ll need to link your free BrainPOP Educators account with your BrainPOP username and password. Do you have suggestions for how we can improve the Mixer experience?  Since this is our newest feature, we’re especially excited to read your feedback. We want to make this tool the best it can be! Want a quick refresher on how to use the Mixer? Check out this screencast:

Wednesday, April 18 4:00PM ET: Assess, Reflect, and Redirect Join us for this special webinar co-presented by our partner Knovation (formerly netTrekker.) We can’t wait to share the powerful assessment resources available from Knovation and BrainPOP and how they complement one another. Additionally, we will help you take a deeper look at the objectives your students are struggling with and how you can find additional resources you can use to reteach, engage and motivate even your most reluctant learners.

Christine Yarzabek’s first grade classroom is a technology integration playground where her students can frequently be found on the SmartBoard, performing research scavenger hunts on their computers, interviewing each other with Flip cameras or practicing for spelling tests on a host of different websites. You can visit her personal blog or follow her on twitter @CYarzy. BrainPOP Jr.  has become an important part of my first grade classroom.  When I first started using it, about four years ago, I strictly showed the video clip and we took the quiz together with the use of our Promethean voting eggs (clickers).  Now…I find myself assessing my students with BrainPOP Jr. in an entirely different way.  We are constantly assessing in our district; whether it be DIBELS, spelling tests, weekly comprehension tests, math tests, and the list goes on and on.  This year, I have found myself assessing my students through BrainPOP in multiples subjects.  Here are some examples of activities I have done with my first graders.

Test Prep Can Be Enjoyable? With BrainPOP It Can! Wednesday, April 13, 2011 4:30 PM EST Duration: 1 Hour Tired of the oppression in the air when test time rolls around for you and your students? Come get the lowdown on how to use BrainPOP to help your students prepare for standardized test taking. We’ll share assessment tricks and tips that will make your life easier and make the dreaded test taking time fun. We said it! Fun. RSVP: http://testprep.eventbrite.com/

BrainPOP Quizzes: Going Beyond A,B,C,D! Wednesday, February 16, 2011 6:30 PM EDT Duration: 1 Hour There’s more to BrainPOP quizzes than just 10 multiple choice questions! Learn how to use our quizzes to activate prior knowledge, differentiate and scaffold instruction, and make test prep more engaging for students. You’ll be sure to leave the webinar with new ideas for adapting the quizzes for all your students. RSVP: http://beyondabcd.eventbrite.com/

Stephanie Filardo will be joining us at our booth at MITC this weekend. Be sure to stop by and say hello if you’re attending! I was introduced to BrainPOP last fall during my 8-week student teaching by Amber Boyington at Mill Creek Middle School, in Lenexa, Kansas. We used it for 6th grade math and I (a true beginner in the classroom) played it safe by purely showing the video and then taking the quiz. The students had been taught sign language for “a,” “b,” “c,” and “d” before I arrived, so we were set for answering! In my teaching methods class, we discussed and modeled using technology to display math concepts in the classroom, but this was something so different than what I had experienced before. One of the challenges in this school is that class periods were 41 minutes long. This means a teacher has to make every minute count. I found BrainPOP videos were a great way to review material from the previous day and to fill those few minutes at the beginning of the class when taking attendance (or creating answer keys for homework when I’d forgotten to make one the previous day). Not only did… Read the Rest»

BrainPOP Jr. has just launched the Full Screen Zoom option on their Quizzes (BrainPOP already offers this feature). This enables those kids in the way back of the room to see, and makes the recent addition of images to the quiz even more enjoyable. I always loved doing the Quiz with my students on our interactive whiteboard. Just look for the little white box with arrows on the upper right hand side of the Quiz screen, and take advantage of this new & improved feature!