We are pleased and proud to introduce Deep Beep – our shiny new curriculum matching tool.
What is Deep Beep?
It’s a tool on our website that enables a teacher to find BrainPOP UK movies that match the objectives in their planning. It’s as simple as that.
Deep Beep is in beta, for now, whilst we gather your feedback. It should all work pretty well but we also know how easily stuff can slip through the net.
We need feedback and ideas on how to grow Deep Beep to be as useful as it possibly can be. We are absolutely dedicated to making every aspect of BrainPOP UK as insanely great as the movies and quizzes. Please place any comments here – or by twitter (@BrainPOP_UK) or all the old fashioned ways!
How does it work?
We have painstakingly tagged every movie in BrainPOP UK to not only the English curricular guidance…
Browsing by English curricula
…but also to Scotland’s 5-14 National Guidelines and the new Curriculum for Excellence .
Choosing 5-14 or the Curriculum for Excellence
Browsing by the Curriculum for Excellence
Finding a movie via the Curriculum for Excellence browse
You click through the selections until you find the objective you need and we should have a movie that complements it. Then just click the movie icon and you’ll be taken straight to it. You also might want to save the movie URL as a bookmark or cut and paste the URL into a lesson plan for later.
What’s next for Deep Beep?
It’s kind of up to you – what suggestions you have. This is only Deep Beep version 1. We’ve built it in such a way that we can add curricula, or functionality, fairly quickly. We intend to iteratively improve it over time.
It’s also built in Flash so there’s a possibility that when we come out of beta it can be embedded in VLEs, as a stand alone BrainPOP UK search and browse tool.
One last thing – why’s it called Deep Beep?
There’s two parts to that answer.
- We spent a long time wrangling with complicated and prosaic titles that tried to describe what it did. Some rejected names included “Movie match maker”, “POPmovie finder”, “BrainMaPPer” and “Unit to Movie Linker Gizmo” (we were getting desperate by this point). So we took another direction instead and decided we could “name” it and sub head it with what it did. Much more fun.
- It’s a gentle homage to Deep Thought, the Super Computer, created by Douglas Adams, one of the team’s favourite authors. We do love him so.
October 14th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
It’s great to see a company making a real effort to engage with and understand the different curriculum in the UK. The new search facility will be really useful as teachers in Scotland plan for and implement the new curriculum.
Well done!
October 14th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Many thanks, Brydon! We’ve always been genuinely impressed at the different ways ICT is engaged with in Scotland and the amazing work and innovation that happens in Scottish schools. There are real opportunities for elearning companies in Scotland and we’re more than willing to be part of that vanguard. Thanks again for your support.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:51 am
This is an excellent tool!
brainpop is such a lovely, fun, user friendly barely know you’re learning site already, and this tool will really help me understand and encourage the flow of what the kids are learning.
looking forward to exlploring further.
October 22nd, 2009 at 9:46 am
@Sisterjulia – thank you for your kind words. It’s always so motivating to hear such things. We’d really like to put your comment in our “buzz” page.
October 23rd, 2009 at 11:09 am
Feel free Chris!