When Stacey Newman, a home educating parent, posted the comment below on POPtalk, we asked if she’d like to review the site.
Not only did Stacey happily write a review but her 10 year old daughter, Esther, added her thoughts to boot!
We couldn’t believe our luck and, we kid you not, there were tears of joy in the eyes of even the stoniest heart in the BrainPOP UK office when we read them…
“A little background:
I actually stumbled across BrainPOP UK by accident and subscribed for the free trial. I must confess that with there being so much information available free of charge on the internet that I doubted I would subscribe to the site once the trial period was finished.
Within the first hour I was impressed with the site.
Before I allowed Esther to sit and use it I checked out a good number of the videos and topics available to see how sensitive issues such as reproduction, war and notorious people in history were dealt with.
I am now most definitely subscribing to the site as I can see the advantage of the small fee for such a wealth of information all in one place. This will cut down on hours of surfing the web for information and further time spent on writing my own quiz questions to see how much Esther has learned and retained.
I was very impressed. Issues are not skirted around, but are dealt with sensitively and I felt, in an age appropriate manner.
The fact that it covers so many topic areas in such an appealing way is fantastic.
We are currently completing a project on World War 2, a difficult subject to cover with a 10 year old. Esther was interested in how it all began and why. We are Christians who have an extremely close friendship with a Jewish family and she wanted to find out more about ‘The Holocaust‘. I did wonder how such difficult subjects might be tackled with Tim and Moby, the lovable, quirky duo. I was extremely impressed. The topic was dealt with very delicately, tenderly and sensitively.
Advantages of BrainPOP UK:
- So much information all in one place – it’s like a one stop shop!
- The videos are engaging and packed with information.
- The videos I have seen are age appropriate and I would not worry about Esther accessing this site without me being in the same room. Safe surfing!
- The quizzes are very useful and can be used in a number of ways. We use the review quiz fairly soon after watching the video clip just to check general comprehension of the topic then later on, sometimes the same day or even a few days later we will use the graded quiz or printed quiz to check retention of the information.
- The extra FYIs that are currently available on some of the topics are also an excellent source of further information. These are being expanded so that more will soon be available.
- The related links are brilliant and again save time ploughing the Net for more resources.
- The search section for easy access to items viewed in the past is very helpful.
- I also must mention the very helpful BrainPOP UK team. I have had many questions re the site and have contacted the help team by phone and email. Every person I have corresponded with and spoken to have been very friendly, professional and helpful.
The BrainPOP UK site is a real asset to me as a busy home educating Mum. I look forward to using the Site often.”
Esther has some thoughts of her own she’d like to share…
“I enjoy everything about BrainPOP UK:
- the videos because they are very informative and give you all the information you need and extra information, which is very easy to comprehend.
- the quizzes because they test the knowledge you have acquired and help you see what you have retained and also what you need to study a bit more.
- the FYIs are very good because they give you just the right amount of extra information without making you bored or making your brain explode with too much information.
The site is excellent but I do think that it would be a good idea to have different levels of quizzes for different age ranges.
I was impressed with all of the site, but I was most impressed with the way they dealt with delicate issues like WW2 and The Holocaust and the fact that these issues are not skirted around or just said in a sentence and not brought up again. The way they do them is great and I think that it has just the right balance. I think this because people need to be told what happened in the past to prevent it from happening in the future.
I was also very impressed with the variety of subjects which could be accessed on the site.
The Tim and Moby characters are really cool, very loveable, very funny and extremely easy to listen to. The stories are very easy to follow.
BrainPOP UK is an incredibly good site and I would recommend it to anybody between the ages of 7-14.”
We really like Esther’s idea for the quizzes – definitely something to bear in mind for future.
As a thank you to Stacey and Esther, we’ve extended their free trial so they now get to enjoy BrainPOP free for the rest of the summer. Lucky them!
As ever, if you have thoughts or feedback you’d like to share with us just get in touch by emailing info@brainpop.co.uk
