In our latest UK specific movie, Tim and Moby describe the many intricacies of being The Queen.
You’ll discover what it means to be Head of State; the difference between queen and government; how many countries are in the Commonwealth; and the conflicting views of the Republicans versus the Monarchists. You’ll also learn why the Queen visits all those overseas countries; why she frequently hosts garden parties; and how she honours those who have been of service to the country. And, just how long has she been in the job?
We’ve made it our featured movie this week, so grab yourself a cuppa and sit down for an audience with The Queen.
Some of the keener eyed amongst you may have noticed that there’s a little football tournament happening in South Africa next week.
It’s Brazil vs England and during half time Tim and Moby give you their guide to the World Cup – the history, the fans and a couple of famous World Cup moments.
Thank you to all the BrainPOP UK fans who contributed their ideas to the movie – we couldn’t include them all although they will probably appear in the supplementary material coming in September. It’s clear that the beautiful game brings out your passion!
Here are the suggestions in full (minus re-tweets and general banter) from our wonderful @BrainPOP_UK Twitter followers when we asked them…
@teachology: Gazza blubbing; baggio pen miss; beckham late goal v greece; Zidane sending off; my dad falling off chair after 1966 winner!
@The_Recommender: Mexican Wave being invented Mexico 86. Nessun Dorma song by 3 Tenors Italy 90. Gazzas tears 90. Zidanes France 98. Pele scoring in 58 final age 17. Geoff Hurst hatrick in 66. Pele’s Brazil thrashing Italy in 70. Maradonna’s 2 goals vs Eng 86.
@dknights: You could have Moby crying reenacting Gazza’s 1990 moment.
@deerwood: Beckenbauer playing while wearing a sling and Andreas Escobar (example of football being taken too seriously?)
@Joga5: The addition of the word WAG into footballing lexicon, Hand of God, Pele and Moore hugging, Roger Milla’s dance when scoring for Cameroon, Lineker getting golden boot
@chrisleach78: Beckham’s red card, Gazza’s tears, Platt’s goal against Belgium
@Mark_C: Archie Gemmill’s goal vs Holland, Marco Tardelli’s goal and celebrations, Diego Maradona’s legit goal vs Eng and NOTHING 1966! OR Zidanes goals France 98, France vs WG semi final 1982, Italy vs Brazil 1982, Cameroon vs Arg 1990
Nine months ago we collected a list of UK specific topics we wanted to turn into Tim & Moby movies. They were to be distinctly about British life, history and culture.
You can imagine what a wide and varied list that was. But we couldn’t make them all. We had to choose a handful to go into production.
The first of these has already premiered – Bonfire Night – which has since gone on to become one of our most viewed movies. Over the next week or so, to coincide with BETT2010, we planned to launch two more.
One of the two was a very hard topic: The Troubles in Northern Ireland, covering the period between 1966 and the signing of The Good Friday Agreement. We’re not afraid to tackle the tough subjects as you’ll know if you’ve seen examples like our 9/11 or Swine Flu movies.
Unfortunately, news of a car bomb today (7th Jan 2010) in County Antrim has made the act of releasing this movie, of which we are very proud, a difficult act. We have made a movie that has proved to be more relevant and topical that we wanted it to be.
This was not an easy movie to make. We consulted carefully in both communities of the province and in Eire, and researched well beyond even our most rigorous normal levels.
We did not want to avoid the contentious aspects of this part of modern history and end up with an anodyne and flavourless movie that only stated facts.
We wanted to stimulate curiosity and provoke discussion, but retain a context for this with a narrative that was accurate and informative. Roger Hurn, a hugely talented writer, ex-head-teacher and storyteller, crafted the script that walks the fine line with care and accuracy.
We realise that given the news in Northern Ireland today (both in terms of security and politics) there will be lots of children asking about this beautiful but troubled part of the UK, and we believe that to shy away from releasing this movie would be to let down the kids who are asking questions that deserve answers.
However, today’s act of violence is a rare break in the peace created by the people of Northern Ireland. Although Politicians captured ‘peace’ in a document – it is the daily life and choices of the people there that make it the daily reality.
This all new BrainPOP UK movie is dedicated to the people of Northern Ireland and their daily struggle to maintain the peace.
…because today sees the premiere of our first ever exclusive BrainPOP UK movie!
(Feel free to watch this Pearl and Dean intro to get in the mood)…ladies and gentlemen of the BrainPOP UK community…we give you…Bonfire Night.
Over the next few months you will see brand new BrainPOP UK movies being launched. Up until now all our movies had already appeared somewhere else, such as on BrainPOP US. Our up coming exclusive movies will all showcase UK specific topics that are pertinent to British educators’ needs.
So this is kind of a big deal for us and we’d love your feedback. It deals with a very British subject, with particular relevance right now. So to celebrate we’ve made the movie free for everyone this week.
Have a look at this list. They’re all brand new movies coming to BrainPOP UK very soon.
We’re extremely proud to announce these movies (and their accompanying quizzes, don’t forget) will be added to BrainPOP UK for all free trials and subscribers.
No extra cost. No hidden charges. No funny business.
They span all the subjects in BrainPOP UK, both Primary and Secondary, and will automatically appear over the next 8 weeks, in batches, with new Maths and English movies already up. The list below is simply alphabetical, but in BrainPOP UK they will be categorised and tagged to curricula.
Example of some of our new English movies
If you dearly need one of these movies for a lesson and you can’t find it in BrainPOP UK (yet) then contact us and we’ll see if we can expedite it specially.
Active Transport
Adding and Subtracting Integers Advanced
Adding and Subtracting Fractions Advanced
Agatha Christie
Aids
Algae
Allergies
Anthrax
Antonyms, Synonyms, and Homonyms
Ants
Appendix
Arachnids
Asexual Reproduction
Associative Property (Order of Calculations)
Asthma
Atmosphere
Autism
Autumn Leaves
Aztec Civilisation
Balance
Blood Pressure
Body Chemistry
Bonfire Night
Bogies
Braces
Brain
Brass Instruments
Calculus
Capitalization
Carbon Cycle
Carnivorous Plants
Cats
Cells
Cellular respiration
Choosing US presidential candidates
Classification
Clauses
Cnidarians
Cold War
Compounds and Mixtures
Computer Mouse
Conditioning
Conjunctions
Conquistadors
Decimals
Diagramming Sentences
Dictionary And Thesaurus
Diffusion
Distance, Speed, and Time
Distributive Property
Division
Ecosystems
Electric Circuits
Electromagnetic Spectrum
Emergency 999
Equations with Variables
Etymology
Exoplanets
Factoring
Fall of the Roman Empire
Fax Machine
Foetal development
Food Safety
Fossils
Frankenstein
Frida Kahlo
Galaxies
Geologic Time
Geometry
Gills
Graphs
Ground Water
Growth
Homer
Hormones
Humans and The Environment
Idioms and Cliches
Imagination
Immune System
Improving Sentences
Inca Civilisation
Isotopes
Joints
Latitude and Longitude
leap Year
Lord of the Flies
Mahatma Gandhi
Maths Problems
Maya Civilisation
Measuring matter
Metals
Metamorphosis
Migration
Mineral Identification
Monotremes
Multiple Sclerosis
Multiplication
Multiplying and Dividing Fractions
Nanotechnology
Natural Disasters
Nervous System
Nutrition
Organic Food
Outer Solar System
Passive Transport
Petrol and oil
Pirates
Poetry
Polyhedrons
Power
Prime Numbers
Printers
Property Changes
Protists
Protozoa
Punctuation
Queen Elizabeth 1
Radioactivity
Reading Skills
Referencing Sources
Respiratory System
Rise of the Roman Empire
Roald Dahl
Roman Numerals
Roots, Prefixes, and Suffixes
Rounding
Scientific Method
Seeding Plants
Sentence Fragments
September 11th
Seven Wonders
Six Kingdoms
Skeleton
Slope and Intercept
Soil
Solar Energy
Stock and Shares
Sumerians
Sun Protection
Symbiosis
Terrorism
The Order of Calculations
The Troubles
The Writing Process
They’re, Their and There
Time Zones
Transformation
Tsunami
Types of Triangles
Urinary System
Using Proportions
Volume of Cylinders
Volume of Prisms
Waste Management
World War I
World War II
World War II Causes
Writing In Sequence
PS: You can find a huge comprehensive list of all our movies that are live on our site on our “Movies list” page.
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.
