POPtalk

We talk about our Tim and Moby movies a lot. Of course we do. They’re what makes BrainPOP UK what it is. And our users tend to like them too.

But did you know each movie also comes with an interactive multiple choice quiz? We call them POP Quizzes. You can find them in the bottom left of each movie page.

You can take a POPquiz right away if you like but you will be offered the option to take it at the end of the movie too.

Each POPquiz is 10 questions long and can be taken in one of three ways.

POPquiz questions are directly related to events in the movie and do two things very well:

• enable the teacher to assess the learning that happened during the movie (which is often shown front of class).
• to provide extension activities to reflect on the learning.

The Graded Quiz

This is taken directly on the screen.

The results are aggregated and you can choose to:

1. Print your score.
2. Email your score to any email address you like (this is particularly useful for the teacher as they can nominate their address so they get all results sent to them).
3. View your mark out of ten on screen.

If you choose the third option you will be able to go back and review all your responses and to reveal the correct answers.

The Review Quiz

The review quiz will not let the student move to the following question until they have provided the correct answer to the one they are attempting.

Upon choosing an answer Moby pops up and tells them if they are right or wrong before taking them back to the question to try again or moving to the next. This provides immediate feedback. Plus kids love seeing Moby pop up (you can’t see it here but Moby’s head shakes from side to side if they get a “Try again”. Take a POPquiz and see for yourself).

The Printed Quiz

I guess this is pretty self explanatory and still a pretty popular option. It allows you to print as many copies of the POPquiz you like and then distribute out to the class to collect later for marking.

I’d like to thank Olivia Newton John’s “Let get physical” 80′s lycra clad exercise hit for inspiration for my title pun so in homage you might want to take an actual 80′s music POP quiz.

What do Frida Kahlo, Roald Dahl, Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X, Homer and Queen Elizabeth I all have in common?

They all star in movies coming soon to BrainPOP UK this year.

BrainPOP UK currently has 100′s of Tim and Moby movies spanning the curriculum for Key stages 2 and 3. In fact, you can see the whole list here.

There are 100′s more on their way (the most recent were Extinction and Fish – you will need to subscribe or take out a free trial to see them). Soon enough we will be delivering extension and supporting material to complement the movies. We are also able to react quickly to world events such as the recent Swine Flu outbreak.

Any website worth its salt has to remain vital. By definition we cannot solve every classroom resource need (and we don’t want to, that would be a Sisyphean ordeal). On the other hand, we do aim to make BrainPOP UK as close to an “everyday application” as possible for educators.

An everyday app is something that, well, you turn to (nearly) everyday. Facebook is a perfect example of an everyday app. Or Twitter. Or any service that, almost unconsciously, you find yourself auto loading when you fire up your browser. Websites you simply have to know what’s happening with as much as possible.

The inimitable Josh Porter, who inspired this post, says:

“An everyday app is one that is used every day (or most days) by its users. This means that each and every day they do something with the app. Maybe they’re communicating with coworkers, or creating wireframes, or sharing what they ate for breakfast. Everyday apps in theory are as plentiful as bees in a blossoming apple tree. In practice, however, everyday apps are exceedingly rare.”

http://bokardo.com/archives/everyday-app/

He quotes a study that suggests the number of “everyday apps” used by UK teens is 9. It’s likely less for the average adult. And maybe even less for the average classroom?

If you subscribe (or even if you don’t) to BrainPOP UK we want to make it so useful, so interesting, so engaging that you bring Tim and Moby into your teaching whenever you can, no matter how small or large and for whatever reason.

I’ll extrapolate on Josh’s theory even further by saying that defining what makes an everyday app might lie in how you form “connections” to it too. It might not be just through the website. BrainPOP UK could become “everyday” for you in a number of ways:

• Special offers, competitions or breaking news via our BrainPOP UK  Twitter feed.
• Free movies you can embed or comment on from our Youtube channel.
• Making a classroom display out of the Tim and Moby images on our Flickr page.
• Spark ideas for lessons from our new movies section that’s updated every Thursday.
• Check out what links we’re saving in Delicious.
• Sending us your BrainPOP UK classroom photos, videos and stories that we can then upload for others to see.
• And, of course, reading this blog (hello!) or subscribing to the RSS feed.

For a classroom resource to become truly useful, in the sense of “daily use”, it could, and should, be useful from many different angles and places. Our movies are a big part of that but we hope we can help you in lots of other ways too – the above are just the start…

A few months back we received an email out of the blue from a lady called Patsy from Hamlets florist in Eccles, Manchester.

She said:

“We are organizing a flower painting competition for primary school children in our local area…we have variety of prizes which includes a meal for four at The Pasta Hut and cinema tickets for a family. Good prizes during the credit crunch. But we need a golden prize, one that all the competing schools will be talking about and aiming for. Now, could we ask you if you could possibly sponsor one of or the overall winner?”

By Eccles, how could we resist? It’s lovely to be considered to be a golden prize. We said we’d be happy to provide a whole school annual subscription and 5 home use subscriptions, for parents and kids to use out of school.

To make it a little more fun we created some prize certificates. Moby’s painting was not quite as good as the winners, but he has used a bold palette and has always taken a Fauvist approach to his work, so full marks for trying.

PS: If you’re holding an art competition in your school and want to use this certificate contact us and we’ll amend the text to whatever you like (as long as it fits), for free, and send you the new image for you to print. Perhaps our Impressionism movie might inspire you.

12 primary schools eventually entered with lots of wonderful still life paintings of flowers. The presentation night was held at the Working Mens Club in Patricroft. The winner was announced and prizes presented by the Mayor on the 24th March.

Clarendon Cottage Primary school was announced as the overall winner but…well, I’ll let Patsy explain:

“I have got one problem. Nobody from the overall winning school, Clarendon Cottage, turned up on the presentation night! The headmistress said she didn’t know they had to come.

I couldn’t change things at such a late stage as it wasn’t the children’s fault. But I did not feel it was right just to drop off the silver cup and the golden prize at the school. A proper presentation of the golden prize and of the cup was still needed even for the child’s sake and also to get you and the Children Services some pictures for your efforts at the very least.”

So the BrainPOP UK golden prize was eventually presented not by the Mayor but by Patsy herself. And for all the effort she went to arranging all this for her local community we think this worked out just right.

So well done to Patsy and everyone at Clarendon Cottage, the standard of entry was extremely high. I’ll leave the last comment to her: “Anyway, the outcome is that the interest for next year is so far through the roof going on the feedback, and parents have called in the shop to thank us.”

So, here we are with a new blog – and one hell of a story to get us going!

BrainPOP has a proud history of dealing with some of the more difficult issues in life. We know how tough or awkward it can be trying to find a way to explain illness, world events or natural disasters to children.

Today BrainPOP UK has released its first UK exclusive movie and it’s about one of those tricky topics that has been in the public eye for some weeks: Swine Flu.

In this 5 minute movie Tim and Moby explain how Swine Flu started, how viruses spread and what to do about them. It also takes the time to dispel some of the rumours and explains what symptoms to look out for.

As it’s Tim and Moby, it’s delivered in a way that will engage your students and stimulate debate and de-mystify some of the rumours.

The story of why we chose this subject, like that of the virus itself, started in Mexico with BrainPOP Español (bet you didn’t know there was a South American BrainPOP, eh?).

As the virus started to take hold and schools started shutting down, children and teachers in Mexico started looking for something that would explain what was going on, and they started spreading word of the BrainPOP Español movie about Flu.

The BrainPOP Mexico team were as worried and affected by the virus as everyone else, so Gabriel and his team decided to make the Flu movie free while the schools were closed – as a public service to kids and families in Mexico.

They uploaded the movie to YouTube and, crucially, made it embeddable. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Although the movie is about flu more generally, it does talk about epidemics and pandemics and how best to look after yourself when there is a bad bug going around.

This is where the story becomes interesting.

Within hours, this movie went viral (in this case the irony of this terminology is unfortunately appropriate). Since being uploaded to Youtube it has been featured in various popular online spaces such as The Eleconomista (a major Mexican newspaper ) and the video itself has been seen over 22,000 times.

As the movie went up the YouTube rankings, the national news channels in Mexico heard about the movie and pretty soon Tim and Moby were out there helping children across Mexico to understand more about the epidemic they were at the centre of.

The success of BrainPOP Mexico helping inform people about Swine Flu gave the rest of BrainPOP the commitment to do more. The founder of BrainPOP, Dr Kadar, knows at first hand how scary stories like this can be – as he is both a paediatrician and immunologist.

So this story of the “little movie that could” is why we are presenting the UK version to you -- a product of the whole BrainPOP family pulling together.

A big BrainPOP UK hello to all of you! We’re twinkly eyed with excitement at finally launching our official blog.

If you stumbled here by accident and you have no clue what BrainPOP UK is or who Tim and Moby are you could do worse than check out our “About Us” page which does exactly what it says on the tin. If you like what you see pop back and get involved.

Not in the mood to click? Then in 50 words or less: “BrainPOP UK is a new website for learners aged 8-14 that contains 100′s of short animated explanations and interactive quizzes, delivered by our intrepid explorers Tim and his best friend, a robot called Moby”.

If you’ve got a spare 1m:39s play the video below and see how Tim and Moby describe it themselves. They do it much better.

For those who do know who we are: hello again, it’s good to have you here! Take a virtual seat and let us, as terms go by, tell you plenty of tall BrainPOP stories.

On our blog you’ll be able to keep up to date with all the exciting things we’ve got planned. As well as news and updates, we’ll be launching exclusive new movies, uploading some ice cool resources, special giveaways and, coming soon, BrainPOP UK events. We also promise to promote and highlight YOUR school tales. We like nothing more than a good classroom yarn.

As a webteam we love ICT, new technology and websites and how it can all be used in real life in real classooms. So expect the occasional geeky post.

We also adore learning about learning. This is why we have lots of fun on Twitter

We hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as we’re going to enjoy writing it!

The BrainPOP UK team