BrainPop

=[|BrainPOP]= An animated educational site intended for children, with interactive quizzes, activities, and videos to aid in understanding Science, Health, Technology, Math, Social Studies and English.

** Resources links **

 * [|BrainPop on Web 100]
 * [|BrainPop’s Blog and Information page for Educators]

** Strengths: **

 * Covers multiple subjects
 * Has many different activities (videos, interactive quizzes, activity pages, etc.)
 * Has homework help available
 * Animations aid in understanding topics better and help bring curriculum to life
 * Content is aligned with standards
 * Appeals to different learning styles
 * Uses Twitter to follow events such as NECC
 * Users can view student or teacher-made video clips on YouTube
 * Very appealing to all ages of students
 * Combined with a SmartBoard, interactive features such as quizzes can be used as a whole class lesson
 * Opportunity for students to ask questions or contribute ideas
 * Can be used as a remediation opportunity to reinforce a concept with struggling learners
 * Activity pages can be typed on and printed out
 * Experiments for most topics that can be used in classroom or at home
 * Home access available for teachers to plan after school hours
 * Home access for students (based on subscription, may be time limited to the school day)
 * Contains graphic organizers on activity pages to help some students organize their thoughts
 * Contains extension activities that can be used as supplemental projects or extra credit
 * Can be used as whole-group or individual instructional tool.
 * Students can e-mail results of graded quiz to teacher.
 * Animations are very simple, fun and straight to the point
 * Can be used with ESL students
 * Certain activities and readings are in Spanish for those students who do not speak ANY English
 * Easy to use
 * BrainPop K-3 is appropriate for young learners
 * Activities can be printed out and done in small groups
 * All topics are described thoroughly.
 * Engaging, educational games students can use as free time option in the classroom and still learn
 * Most school districts see the value in this program and have free accounts so it is very easily accessible.
 * Differentiation: students can work individually at their own pace.
 * Kept CURRENT. This is very important, especially for topics in Technology that are constantly changing, BrainPop is constantly updating their content.

Weaknesses:

 * EXPENSIVE! Need to purchase a subscription except for the occasional free videos
 * Have to watch videos first because they’re not always relevant to the topic it is associated with
 * Vocabulary may also be on a more advanced level than state standards were written thus creating confusion.
 * It is still just watching a video--not truly interactive except for the quizzes which can be more interactive via SmartBoard
 * Questions may or may not be response from Tim and Moby
 * Does not provide feedback to answers on activity page (student must print --> teacher must grade)
 * Contains only a small amount of topics covered in each subject (particularly math)
 * Home access only available for an additional cost. (However, it can be accessed prior to 5:30 PM at home on weekdays.)
 * Limited audience
 * Videos would require headphones for students to use independently in the classroom (in stations or working solo)
 * Quizzes must be printed or emailed to the teacher, making it difficult to grade since printing problems are likely and emails could be cumbersome.
 * Assignments lack the ability to be altered and tailored to teachers needs.
 * Might need to print the worksheets in advance (for activities and watching the video), make photocopies, and have them complete as they interact with the site.
 * Not exactly a web 2.0 tool.
 * Teachers can unfortunately use it all the time, leaving students without the opportunity for better lessons that are out there.

**Opportunities: **

 * Enhance or reinforce a lesson with video clips
 * Use quizzes to check comprehension
 * Use as a pre or post activity explanation (good supplement for labs)
 * Additional activities included to reinforce concept
 * Entice visual and verbal learners.
 * Helps to add enrichment to lessons
 * Good to use as a center during differentiated instruction
 * ESL students can be working in their corresponding level

** Threats: **

 * Some topics may be sensitive or controversial with a young audience
 * Social Studies topics, including the videos, are better for middle school students than high school students due to the use of cartoons and abbreviated content
 * Students may rely on wanting to learn from it too much: so the teacher should use other Web 2.0 tools available to them.

Ideas for the classroom:

 * Show BrainPop videos as a transition between activities
 * Videos are great to introduce a new topic.
 * Have class watch video and come up with what they felt were the most important facts and see if those are similar to the quiz questions provided on the site
 * Ask students if they could create their own Brain Pop video to explain a process.
 * Use as a "center" in the classroom so students can rotate through while teacher works with small groups
 * Use for whole class review with teacher-created teams answering quiz questions for points
 * Print the quiz and use as an assessment for end of unit reviews.
 * Use videos to create WebQuests to increase student interaction
 * Reinforce reading skills by having students complete graphic organizers based on the video.

Examples of Use in the Classroom

 * During review close to state mandated testing time, I have a "centers" day once a week that covers different topics in math. One of the centers includes watching Brainpop videos and taking the quiz. For example: Center 1- Elapse time domino game; Center 2- Division flash cards; Center 3- Money game; Center 4- BrainQuest cards; Center 5- Brainpop Polygon movie and then Angles movie.

Using BrainPop to teach Digital Citizenship: B. Osfield I have used BrainPop for 4 years (initially used and had all free videos that could be used, was so successful, we got a school-wide subscription) to teach a unit on Digital Citizenship..
 * The students worked independently working through the topics, watching the videos, and working through activities and additional reading to aid in learning the content.
 * Students then would take the quiz, and 'print' to a pdf file to turn in.
 * Students could redo the quiz for a better grade, though it was amazing how many students chose not to take this opportunity to improve their grade.
 * Quiz retake downside, was that students could 'cheat' by just taking the ungraded quiz that gives an immediate response, and get all the answers. Though, I rarely saw this happening.
 * This was a very successful use, and students did well on the final unit test.
 * The video content was kept current.

Brain Pop- M. Markowitz I have used Brain- pop in my classroom many times. It offers lessons in all subjects and has content for all grades. It has music and song sites for learning math and reading facts, history and science lessons, and ideas for non-traditional teaching.

-Kelley Ward
 * I use Brain Pop as an introduction to new topics or as a quick review of material for my third graders. Sometimes, we watch the videos whole class and then I will show the quiz. Next, I will randomly choose students to answer the questions correctly for a piece of candy, so they don't know who will get picked and they have to pay attention. They enjoy this and aways ask if they can take the quiz!
 * I have used many of the "activities" that are listed with the videos. Many of these activities are fun and quick ways to explore more of the topic. My favorite is watching the video on "Non-fiction" and then using the book template from the activities section for students to create their own book about an animal they researched. This covers all the text features that were discussed in the video. Fun project!
 * Sometimes as a pretest, I have students watch the video independently and then take the quiz. Their results help me determine how much they understand a topic and what extra information I need to cover. This can be a good indicator for planning lessons.
 * Instead of taking the quiz, I will create a paper that has the questions on it and they can answer while they view the video independently.

In my pre-internship, my mentor teacher used Brainpop as a way to open students' minds to a new topic. She really used it as a basis for an introductory discussion about what they were going to learn. The students were engaged and ready to learn even more about the butterfly cycle, and when they went into specific vocabulary for this process, many of the students would recognize the terms from the video! -Molly Gibson

My students have a menu of web based activities that they can choose from when they earn computer time as a behavior incentive. BrainPop is one of those options, and one that is chosen often by my students so that they can go into the Gameup section. There are different categories of games from science, math, social studies, health, English, and engineering/ tech games. They all have academic backgrounds and supplement core content areas we focus on. -Sabrina Kincade