POPtalk

We’ve thought long and hard about how we can make being a BrainPOP UK subscriber even more beneficial than it already is. On that note (drum roll please) we’d like to introduce you to a brand new feature: Spotlights.

Being part of BrainPOP UK  should be rewarding, providing a sprinkle of inspiration each time you log in. So a subscriber-only space where we bring together movies, additional content, and fun stuff all in one place seemed to be just the ticket.

The main aim being? To create a place of inspiration for teachers and students alike and ensure you get the most from being part of BrainPOP UK.

Hence, Spotlights. We’re unveiling them this week. But, what are they?

Spotlights bring together hand-picked movies relating to a central theme. They also provide additional content in the shape of fun experiments, info sheets, lesson plans, links to handy Spotlight-related websites and POP Spot; a special Spotlights area of POPtalk.

We’ve come up with a different Spotlight for each month of the year so hopefully you’ll find something useful for lessons.

To help you plan, here’s what’s coming up:

Spotlight on…stupendous structures and oustanding construction. Gravity, compression and tension at work.

Spotlight on…wet, windy and wonderful weather. Eyes skywards for some cloud spotting with Tim & Moby.

Spotlight on…your world. Up for a rescue mission? Taking responsibility to reboot, reuse and recycle.

Spotlight on…growing up. Can you blame it all on the hormones? Yes you can! Tim & Moby help with a few growing pains.

Spotlight on…the human body. It’s an amazing machine. Learn how it works, and how to look after it properly, with Tim & Moby.

Spotlight on…a galaxy far far away. Tim & Moby journey into Space, avoiding the Death Star, to investigate planets, stars, galaxies and more.

We’ve made our first Spotlight accessible to all to start with so that everyone gets the chance to try Super Structures on for size.

Your feedback is like gold dust to us so let us know what you think – any suggestions welcome!

We’re doing much nail biting in anticipation (eugh!)

Today we launched our “Free stuff” page. It does exactly what it says on the tin.

This one-stop-shop brings together ALL our free movies in every subject. And they will stay free for the forseeable future. So you can link directly to them if you want to highlight a movie to your students or collegues in your VLE, on your blog, etc. We’ve even made the weblink easy to remember.

http://www.brainpop.co.uk/free_stuff_from_brainpop_uk

We think, collectively, they represent some of the best things about BrainPOP UK. You may or may not agree with our choices but we love each one of these movies.

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…

…but also to Scotland’s 5-14 National Guidelines and the new Curriculum for Excellence .

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.

Maths has multiplied at BrainPOP UK – we have uploaded 25  brand new maths movies!

This is our excuse to mention as many of them as possible. So here goes…

Fractionally, there are almost double the amount of Maths movies  we used to have (I did a bit of Rounding there). Your feedback told us that this Multiplication was necessary to solve your Maths Problems.

So, Factoring in Distance, Speed and Time to bring these to you has meant that there has been no Division in our attention.

This Transformation to our list has shows that, from Polyhedrons to Calculus, Proportionally we have XLV of the best Maths concept animations you’ll ever see.

Hi! How are you?

I don’t believe we’ve met before. Let me introduce myself – I’m Preview Page, though friends call me Viewy. Really nice to meet you. At last! Heh.

What do I do? Well, it’s my job to give you more information about a movie.

You’ll see me whenever you try to view a movie without being signed into BrainPOP UK.

The old guy, Login Page (a relative of mine), stood in for me whilst I was learning the ropes. He fancies retiring and he advised me, well, insisted if you have to know, that it’s time for me to step up.

So I’m here and ready to do my duty, yessir.

What do I do that Login Page can’t? Good question! For one thing, I will tell you all about the movie. And because a picture speaks a thousand words I’ll show you a screenshot too. I’ll even let you know about related movies you might be interested in.

If you want to see the movie itself then I’ll bid you farewell because once you log into your free trial or subscription you’ll be whisked off to see it, no questions asked.

One thing that’s worth remembering about me: I love to dress up so I’ve made an effort to be different for every single movie in BrainPOP UK. You should see the size of my closet.

To give you an idea why don’t you check out some of these links?

Don’t I just look fabulous?

Science > Asteroids

Humanities > Volcanoes

English > Personal Pronouns

Maths > Adding and Subtracting Fractions

The Arts > Jazz

PSHE & Citizenship – Puberty

Design and Technology > Online Safety

If you visit BrainPOP UK in the next few days it may act a little…freaky.

You may see a few empty categories or movies that appear or disappear rather randomly and some new and unfamiliar sub-categories.

This blog post is to let you know that you’re not going barmy; it’s us making some long over due enhancements to the website. We’ve spent the last few months completely reviewing all our curriculum tagging on BrainPOP UK.

The most immediate change is to improve the findability of movies via the homepage using language the classroom teacher is comfortable and happy with. So we’re changing or adding brand new sub categories.

For example:

• “Cell Structure” will be changed to “Cells” and placed into a new sub category called “Life Processes”.
• “Weather and Climate” will be added to the sub category “Geography” under the main category “Humanities“
• “Using and Applying” is a brand new sub category.

Instead of taking the whole site down we thought we’d do them one by one over the next week or so. We hope it won’t effect your experience but if you can’t find a movie or quiz in that time then come back later and it will probably have returned. You can always use the keyword search at the top of the screen as the movies themselves are not going anywhere. Also if you link to any categories you may need to change the URL after it’s moved.

PS: We’re also re-vamping our Curriculum Planning tool (which we’re simply calling the FIND tool for now) and adding lots of new movies. LOTS of new movies. There’s a whole separate blog post coming soon about them.

PPS: You are going to be blown away with all the BrainPOPpy goodness that’s on the way.

How do we decide what movies to make? Well, thanks for asking, Chris. Believe it or not, all our movies are sourced from inquisitive people like you.

At the start of every movie Tim reads out a letter that has come to us from a child or teacher somewhere in the world. We get 1000’s of these emails and letters every year.

Some geniune real life examples:

• “Dear Tim & Moby, I think you should show a video on myspace. A lot of people use it and it is sometimes dangerous. Can you teach me a little bit more about it please?”
• “Dear Tim & Moby, How do you make and design toys and remote control cars?”
• “Dear Tim & Moby, Why do alligator mums and dads eat their babies when they’re little?”
• “Dear Tim & Moby, Hi there, I’m going to be teaching year 2 children about making an emergency call to 999. Can I suggest that you make a video clip about what the procedure would be, what questions they would be asked when they call and what constitutes an emergency? Your site is great and I will be signing up when my trial is up. Thanks!”
• “Dear Tim & Moby, Can you make a film about polymer?”
• “Dear Tim and Moby, what is anime or manga? I have heard its some kind of Japanese art form.”
• “Dear Tim & Moby, Cheese: I love cheese, I can’t get enough of the stuff, so how do you make it and where does it come from?”

What happens to my suggestion after I send it in?

Tim and Moby write back to everyone who writes in to request a movie (assuming you include your contact details).

All movie suggestions go into a queue where they are regularly discussed and, if we think it’s a topic we want to explore or enough people ask for it (or someone really goes the extra mile to suggest a movie) then we’ll likely go ahead and do it.

What movies we do is up to Tim and Moby, so there’s no guarantees. But you never know if you don’t try, right?

We LOVE getting suggestions from BrainPOPpers. So why not get your class to submit Tim and Moby letters on topics that interest them?

Wouldn’t you like to claim “that’s me!” in a Tim and Moby movie?

So if you have a topic you’d like to see BrainPOP UK explaining then you could send us “Dear_Tim_and_Moby”_letter and email it to timandmoby@brainpop.co.uk or post it into us:

Tim & Moby
BrainPOP UK
267, Banbury road,
Oxford
OX2 7HT

We’d especially like to see UK specific movie ideas – history, geography, famous British figures, culture and so on.

Remember, the foundation of BrainPOP UK is YOU. So keep your movie ideas coming!

PS: Who knows what other goodies we give to the lucky someone that gets their movie made?

What is our featured movie?

The featured movie is always free – to anyone who visits BrainPOP UK, not just subscribers or those on a free trial.

It appears on our front page and is kind of a “spotlight” movie. Today we changed it from the long standing “Swine Flu” movie to the enlightening “Surrealism” movie. We try to change it regularly as we can. Or remember

How do we choose what gets to be a featured movie?

It really does depend. We usually check the days headlines by visiting BBC news and the brilliant CBBC Newsround website and see if there’s been any interesting stories that might come up in the classroom. We also try to tie featured movies into events and topics e.g. Pi day.

Here are some we chose in the last few months (you may need to be logged on to view some of these movies):

• Satellites – when American and Russian satellites collided
• William Shakespeare – to celebrate National Children’s book week
• Email & IM - when we reached our 100th follower on Twitter (but we can’t remember who it was!)
• Floods – due to flooding in North Dakota (these photos are amazing!)

Once we even made our “Sun” movie the featured movie simply because it was a lovely sunny day outside. And why not?

If nothing in the news or around us seems appropriate we’ll usually turn to you guys and ask.

A good way of doing that is to turn to our Twitter crowd to see if there’s any teachers on there that can be helped out by one of our movies.

For example @stevebob79 recently asked:

We reckoned we could help out so we said…

“@stevebob79 We’re very proud of our Blog movie for KS2. Would make a cracking starter. I’ve made it free, just for you: http://bit.ly/ePnGA“

So the Blogs movie became our (free) featured movie because @stevebob79 had a need for one. Simples. He also suggested a way we could tweak it to make it more effective which we did.

Our tweet was also spotted by another one of our followers, @HGjohn, who said:

In fact, HGjohn (John Sutton of CreativeICT blogs fame) went on to mention us and the movie as a recommended resource in his newsletter. Peter Rafferty (@Raff31) also said:

As my Granny said, if you don’t ask, you don’t get!

So there you have it for the humble featured movie. If you want to suggest a featured movie that you can use with your class we are all ears.

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.

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