We’ve gathered together a collection of what we consider our most useful and relevant topics for you to use in class if you’re planning an internet safety lesson tomorrow (or whenever actually!).

Online Safety

Online Safety (FREE) – Use this topic to learn how to keep your identity a secret; how to identify people who might not be as nice as they seem; and who can help you stay safe.  BrainPOP is an online resource so we appreciate how important it is for kids to stay safe online.

Information Privacy

Information Privacy - The Internet is a fun place but it can also be dangerous. Spammers, hackers, and identity thieves lurk in the corners of the World Wide Web waiting to grab unsuspecting users’ personal information. In this movie, Tim and Moby show you how you can keep yourself safe online by keeping your personal information private! You’ll learn how to recognise and avoid the most common scams used by these digital miscreants and find out why it’s important to read a site’s privacy policy before entering with anyone you don’t know in real life. Finally, you’ll discover why it’s never a good idea to post information that you wouldn’t want your parents or teachers to see! Don’t be scared of the Internet; educate yourself, and be prepared!

Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying – Dealing with cyberbullying doesn’t have to ruin your day. In this movie, you’ll learn about some of the different techniques online bullies use to get inside their victims’ heads. You’ll also find out why bullies might act this way, and how some of them may not even realise that they’re doing anything wrong. Finally, Tim will explain what to do if you are bullied online, showing you different strategies for keeping your online experience pleasant and safe. This topic also comes with an activity you can complete after watching the movie. This topic’s like a self-defence class for the world wide web!

Social Networking

Social Networking - Millions of people worldwide have joined online social networks and in this topic, Tim and Moby explain what all the fuss is about! You’ll find out exactly how social networks bring people together, and why so many users have signed up. You’ll also discover what some of the largest, most popular social networking sites are all about, and how you and your friends can use them to update one another about your plans and activities! Finally, Tim tells you why it’s important to protect your privacy when you use social networking sites, and also gives you a few valuable tips to help you stay safe – and have fun!

Digital Etiquette

Digital Etiquette - Tim and Moby teach you about the do’s and dont’s of digital etiquette, a.k.a. netiquette, and why you should be as polite online as you are offline. In this topic, learn how the code of conduct we follow in our everyday lives applies to how you communicate digitally, from emails to instant messages to social networking websites. Discover how the Internet poses unique challenges to etiquette, and see how practices like “flaming” and “trolling” can transform a friendly message board into a verbal battleground. How can you fight online rudeness and help bring courtesy and respect back to the web? Start by watching this movie!

Is your school a Google apps user with a Google apps domain?

Then pour yourself a nice hot cup of tea, sit down, and take a deep breath. We’ve got some major news for you.

We’ve teamed up with Google to provide schools and LAs that are Google Apps users with a Google Apps domain to access BrainPOP UK resources via your Google account AND to be able to export quiz results directly into a Google Doc spreadsheet.

And the app is completely free.

Bet you’re glad you sat down now, eh?

Look! It's BrainPOP UK in your Google toolbar

Single Sign-On

If you’re logged into your school Google account you can now access BrainPOP UK straight from your toolbar.

1. Ask your Google Administrator to add the BrainPOP UK app. Search the Google EDU Marketplace for BrainPOP UK.
2. Click ‘Add’.
3. Under “configure” you add your BrainPOP UK login details. This links your Google account with your BrainPOP account.

You will now be able to access BrainPOP UK seamlessly under your Google toolbar under “More” alongside other apps you’ve installed.

This means you now have the convenience of a single sign-on. Teachers and students will be able to access BrainPOP UK directly using their Google Apps account. Cool, huh?

That’s not all. The REALLY cool bit is next.

Track and Store Student Progress using Google docs

After completing any BrainPOP UK graded quiz, a 4th option will magically appear - “Send to Teacher’s Google Spreadsheet”.

Send your BrainPOP UK quiz results to your teacher's spreadsheet

Once they do, the student will be prompted for the teacher’s email address. The results will be automatically sent to a spreadsheet that will appear among the teacher’s Google docs. Within the spreadsheet, each topic the teacher assigns gets its own worksheet (“tab”), storing students’ first, second, and most recent quiz score along with their names and Google App IDs. A summary sheet is included to help teachers further customise the data.

Remember - students will only have the option of sending their answers to their teacher’s spreadsheet if the student has logged in to BrainPOP UK through Google Apps. If you log directly into BrainPOP UK this 4th option will not appear.

Stuff you might want to know

How do I integrate my BrainPOP UK account with Google Apps?

When the app is installed, the system administrator will be prompted to integrate the accounts. If you do not integrate the accounts, or you do not have a BrainPOP UK account, you will still be able to access our free content through the Universal Navigation Menu and enjoy the integration of our quizzes with Google Spreadsheets.

Can I sign in to BrainPOP UK manually and still send my results to a spreadsheet?

No, the ability to save quiz results to a teacher’s spreadsheet is only available when you access BrainPOP UK directly from Google Apps.

When I choose to send my results, I’m asked for my teacher’s email address. Which one should I use?

You’ll need to use your teacher’s Google Apps email address to make sure the quiz results are sent properly. Ask him or her what that is.

Why can’t I resend my results after choosing the “Retake the Quiz” option?

You can’t send your quiz results more than once in a single session. The next time you visit BrainPOP UK to take the quiz, however, you will be able to.

I use Google Docs at school. Am I able to take advantage of this integration?

While Google Apps does utilise Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets, your school must be a Google Apps user with a Google Apps domain.

Learn a little more from this Google video about the EDU marketplace

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9TFnWrL8jw

“As a child who is always keen to investigate topics and, at the same time, is an enthusiastic technology user BrainPOP UK is a daily ‘must visit’ site.

J is a boy with motor coordination and planning difficulties (dyspraxia), but the site is completely accessible to him. A few clicks of the mouse and the odd bit of typing and he’s able to get to where he wants to be – independently.

J loves to start with one topic and, by using the intelligent search, he will choose a movie to make his first ‘viewing’.

As he watches Tim and Moby he chats along with them and answers their questions. For J this is an important part of learning. He needs to see the pictures but also see and hear the words too.

Frequently he will laugh heartily at the content and, of course, he has some favourite movies (Bogies is his all time number 1!).

He loves to share the movies he likes with his pals and they will all take turns to answer the POPQuiz at the end. Judging from their reactions, it’s a great hit for children from 5 to 13.

At the start of each week, to help J with his planning and organisational skills, we talk about topics we’ll be covering or places that we are going to visit. J will carry out preparation work by seeing what BrainPOP can tell him.

Sometimes, BrainPOP is used to consolidate learning done in other settings. For example, in the picture above, he was checking up on Sir Francis Drake by watching the Pirates movie. We’d been on holiday the week before and visited Buckland Abbey, which was Drake’s home.

Whilst on holiday, J used the iPhone app to see the daily free movie when he wasn’t out building sandcastles. It too is simple to use and contains the same great graphics the website has.

The best thing about BrainPOP for J is that it is completely his domain. The content is informative, fun and he drives his own exploration and learning. It keeps him engaged and Tim and Moby do not get fed up or complain about repeating themselves.

He seeks out the new movies and is keen to share his new found knowledge with us.

What a lovely way to learn!

PS: J, as a peice of extension work for his blog post above, designed it as a PDF Independent Learning with Tim & Moby designed by J and also recorded a short Audioboo:

As most of you will know, every single BrainPOP movie starts with a letter for Tim & Moby. And the hundreds of questions we answer with our movies aren’t the only questions we get.

Last week we realised we’ve now received over 100 questions on our Ask Tim & Moby post and, on top of those, we get questions emailed from children daily. We do our best to answer each and every one too!

Bearing all this in mind, we appreciate that sometimes there’s simply nothing better than putting good old pen to paper, and this morning we received one of the most exciting pieces of post (ever!) from Class 5H at Woodlands Primary School. Letter upon hand-written letter for Tim & Moby.

All questions put to Tim & Moby go into a list that we look through when we decide which movies to make. We’ve saved a selection to our Flickr stream but we thought we’d try and answer a few here for which we already have movies.

Q. Dear Tim & Moby…Why is the time different around the world? From Florence and Jessica

A. Have a look at our Time Zones movie, girls! We’re pretty sure it’ll answer your question.

Q. Dear Tim & Moby…Why do tornadoes start? From Keanu

A. Hi Keanu! We think our Tornadoes movie will have all the answers you’ll need. Remember to try the quiz at the end to see how much you took in.

Q. Dear Tim & Moby…What are tenths and hundredths? From Luke

A. Maths can be so confusing at times. We think our Decimals movie will be just the ticket for you, Luke.

Q. Dear Tim & Moby…How do we age? From Lourdes

A. What a fantastic question, Lourdes! You can learn all about the ageing process in our Ageing movie.  Also, look for our favourite quote in the FYI, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80,” (Henry Ford, American businessman). We couldn’t agree more Mr Ford!

Q. Dear Tim & Moby…Why do boats float? From Trafford

A. We love a physics question, Trafford, thanks! Boats float because of a force called buoyancy. Learn all about it in under three minutes by watching our Buoyancy movie.

A teacher from Menston Primary took some time to talk to a BrainPOPper at our stand at the BETT exhibition in January.

He liked what he saw so he took out a free trial to explore the product and see if it was a useful and valuable resource for his school. So far, so normal.

But how he and his class went about evaluating BrainPOP UK was rather special.

He turned BrainPOP over to his Year 3/4 class and asked them to express their opinions about our resources. Essentially he created a lesson out the evaluation and kindly sent us the results as he thought it might interest us. We’re so glad he did as you will see below.

To start with he used a tool called “Primary Pad” to request written expressions of their favourite BrainPOP movies, Tim & Moby, what they learned and how they felt about BrainPOP. Primary Pad is a wiki - it lets multiple people contribute to the same document, in real time. It’s collaborative writing.

Here’s some of their quotes:

• “hi we have just watched the calculator video it is really good you should watch it .We would love to have brain pop on the computer.this is really usefull for doing homework because if you are learning about floods there is a video for floods and it tells you lots of things so you will have a good peace of homework.”
• “we watched the video about new year celabratoins it was really good it was good to find out how different couyntries celabrate new year and what they do on new years night because different countries celabrate in differet ways. We found out that in china they all wear red and they dance with a chinease dragon and they have chinease lantans and have a big dinner party.”
• “WE FOUND THAT COCO~BEEN TREE LIVES IN AMERACA AND A FEW OTHER COUN eWE WATCHED A CHOCOLATE VIDIEO AND IT MADE OUR MOUTHS WARTER I LOVED IT!!!!!!!llllll”
• “The good bit about the drawing is that it shows you what order to draw the things in!!! It also tells you if you can use pens,pencils,chork,crayons or paint to draw.The cartoons of Tim and Moby are really funny and cool! It tells you neally everything you want to know about the thing that you search for and it is good that you have a choice of what type of quiz you do.”

But wait. It gets even more awesome.

He then asked his two of his pupils to use an audio recording tool called “Audioboo” to interview each other about their experience of BrainPOP. He sent us the MP3 and we just LOVED it. In fact, we thought it was so great we animated it (with the school’s and parents permission). You can see it embedded below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWve7HKkO4E

Thank you to Menston Primary for sharing your experiences of BrainPOP with us, and special thanks to the two pupils who recorded their interview.

Today we announce the launch of a UK version of the incredibly popular BrainPOP educational app for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, bringing our animated educational resources directly to kids’ fingertips. The original version of the app – launched in April 2010 – has been downloaded more than 425,000 times and recommended by leading publications such as The New York Times and iPhone Life magazine. It has also been featured multiple times on iTunes.

Learn Something New Every Day – Free!

The BrainPOP UK Featured Movie App is downloadable from the iTunes App Stores in Ireland and in the UK – where it is already No.1 in the “New and Noteworthy” section in the Education category!

The App delivers a new animated movie and related quiz every day. Topics are timely and contextual, covering current events, historical figures and milestones, holidays, and much more. It also contains 21 other movies from across our subjects, each with it’s own POPquiz.

BrainPOP UK iPhone app subjects section

It also records your scores so you can track your progress.

We love this App and we think you will too. So if you have an Apple mobile device – what are you waiting for? It’s FREE! Download it !

We discussed our very first subscribing school (you never forget your first customer); our first TeachMeet movie;  our first big “event”  movie -  Swine Flu (which has now been seen over 80,000 times on Youtube) and our very first exclusive UK Movie (Bonfire Night).

Inevitably it was a year of firsts.

Now it’s time once again to settle down in front of a roaring yule fire, Xmas tree twinkling in the corner replete with presents and cast a misty eye back over 2010. These are our things that defined our year, in reverse order.

6) BrainPOP UK 2.0 – an explosion of new resources and improvements

This year we welcomed a whole host of extras to BrainPOP UK, as well as the new BrainPOP ESL.

FYIs, a “Free Stuff” page and Subtitles for every movie were the major additions. Many of the site’s features were enhanced too, from the Preview page to smarter 4 question POPquizzes to improving the Teachers Use page.

We’ll keep making BrainPOP better everyday. Why? Because you’re worth it.

5) Lots and lots of new Topics arrived on BrainPOP UK in 2010

Divali, Sumerians, Property changes, Social Networking, Galaxies, Homer, The Queen, Imagination, Helen Keller, Time Zones…we could go on.

So we will. Information Privacy, Conquistadors, Urinary System, Six Kingdoms, The Mayans, The Rise (and Fall) of the Roman Empire, The Troubles, Emergency 999…

In 2011 we. will. rock. your. classroom. There’s many more topics coming next year. We also pledge to make at least one new movie for every Spotlight.

4) The Featured movie “POPbox”

New in 2010 was the ability to embed our free featured movie into your blog, website or VLE. It works in almost anything and once it’s embedded it runs itself and will automatically change whenever we change the featured movie. It’s a fantastic way to add a bit of BrainPOP to your website. And you can even get it as a WordPress plugin!

3) Spotlights

Each month in 2010 we grouped resources together around a common theme, called “Spotlights“. Alongside a hand picked selection of movies, we added extra resources, collections of useful weblinks and unique extension materials. We’ve even run Spotlight competitions including the opportunity to win a £100 voucher for Health Edco (Growing Pains), DVDs and Film Scripts (Making Movies) and an all expenses paid trip to the Moon (Starship BrainPOP)*.

There’s more Spotlights coming in 2011, including Digital Citizenship, Ideas that Changed The World and BrainPOP Safari. We hope they’ve got your lesson planning muscles twitching.

*One of those may not be true.

2) Using BrainPOP at home

The more we hear from our users the more we realise how well BrainPOP translates into a home environment.

We saw a huge growth in the number of Mums and Dads subscribing to BrainPOP, as well as a greater swing from schools to our 24/7 home use licencing (also accessing via VLEs). It’s a killer homework support or research/reinforcement tool.

No wonder it’s such a hit at home as well as in the classroom.

We’ll leave BrainPOP subscribers Stacey and Esther Newman the final word on this:

“So much information all in one place – it’s like a one stop shop! The videos are engaging and packed with information, are age appropriate and I would not worry about Esther accessing this site without me being in the same room. Safe surfing!”

1) YOU!

We are very lucky to have tremendous support from and involvement with educators and learners of all types. This year members of the BrainPOP tribe:

• Made a huge contribution to the team at BETT 2010 as VIBs
• Created us a WordPress POPbox widget
• Recorded a “How to integrate It’s Learning VLE & BrainPOP” movie
• Graciously invited BrainPOP to contribute to your events, such as TeachMeet, Fishbowl, Storytyne, Global Education Conference and “Collabor8 4 Change”
• Showcased a school blog for the start of our #digitalk series
• Welcomed Moby into their classroom via the magic of Skype
• Highlighted BrainPOP as a top tool for newly qualified teachers in the “PGCE Survival Guide“
• Invited Moby to a Wii “dance off” at SLF 2010
• Told us why your school subscribed to BrainPOP
• Watched our Youtube movies over 125,000 times
• Crowd sourced a viral movie to help promote our new FYIs
• Geocached in a BrainPOP style
• Contributed dozens of World Cup memories and highlights to our World Cup movie
• Re-tweeted, commented, liked, viewed, linked and clicked their way into our hearts.

All contributions, no matter how small, mean an awful lot to the BrainPOP UK team. So we want to sign this post out with this simple message: 2010 taught us that it takes a village to make a good educational product and we’re proud to be part of YOUR learning family.

Have a very Moby Xmas and wonderful new year everyone!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rVF17sYrog

We didn’t know at the time but Jen is also a big BrainPOP fan and had used BrainPOP topics in some of her lessons to explain concepts to her class before they began geocaching. So before you say “Geo-what?” we asked Jen if she would write a small beginners guide to combining geocaching and BrainPOP. She happily obliged and we are happy to post it below!

All over the world there are more than 1 million treasures just waiting for you and your students to find!

The official geocaching site defines the practice as:

“Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment.”

The idea is simple: you locate a cache (usually a plastic container), sign a log book, and log your find online. Caches are hidden all over the world, just waiting to be discovered.

Some caches have small prizes you can trade, or trackable travel bugs that each have their own code, and a page on the official website so you can see where they have been and where they are trying to go. For example this cache is all about two submarines from World War II that you can see when the tide is out, off the coast of Scotland.

There’s only a couple of rules:

1. If you take something, you leave something.
2. If you remove a travel bug you are supposed to move it along to another cache. This is one of my travel bugs “Dorothy the Dalgliesh Dolphin” . She has been all over Canada and the UK.

I hide temporary caches in the school yard, designed around learning activities. But I also use caches on the www.geocaching.com network to learn about history, geography, or the local area.

Most caches are hidden somewhere that is a place of interest, whether it is a beautiful spot, or a place of historical, geographic, or geologic significance. It is a great way to learn about a place you are visiting!

Combining geocaching & BrainPOP

When introducing a new technology it’s great to show students how it works to get a better understanding of the real world application. I use the BrainPOP UK Global Positioning System movie to help my students understand GPS and that they aren’t just working with the technology in their hands, but also in space.

One of my favourite geocaching lessons was a science lesson. We used the BrainPOP UK PH Scale movie to learn about the concept and to learn how to test acids and bases using litmus paper.

We used our GPS units to go out and find hidden geocaches around the playground with a sample of a substance.

Using PH strips, or litmus paper, we tested the substances. If the students thought it was an “acid” they followed one set of coordinates, a “base” another set. If they chose the correct set of co-ordinates they got another substance to test. If they chose incorrectly they found a quick reminder of how litmus paper worked, then they had to try again!

Another great benefit of using GPS devices is distance measurement and estimation. The handheld unit shows how far away a marked waypoint, or geocache is, and counts down distance as you get closer to a cache (or counts up if you are going the wrong way!).

The BrainPOP UK movie Estimating Distances is a great way to tie in Maths with Geocaching and help students understand distance relationships in real life when they are caching on the playground and how this compares with a map.

Once we find a distance in real life on the playground using the GPS (for example the distance from the door of the school to a cache) then we can create a map of our playground and create a map scale to represent the distance on our map.

Try geocaching using GPS with your class. It’s a great new way to get outdoors to learn!

Jen Deyenberg, Primary Teacher, Scotland.

More about Jen: Read Jen’s fascinating blog: www.trailsoptional.com . Jen was a Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teacher 2009 and was nominated Best Individual Tweeter & and Best New Blog at the Edublogs awards 2009

If you look at the movie player bar on any movie you will now see an “S” button.

Clicking this button will show and hide subtitles for that movie. Like this:

Why have we added subtitles?

There’s a range of benefits to transcribing the movie and displaying subtitles.

1. The most obvious benefit is to students with a hearing impairment, or even students at the back of class who may not be able to hear Tim & Moby as well as those at the front.
2. Subtitles encourage reading – just having the subtitles showing will make the students read without even knowing they’re doing it (stealth reading?). Be default this will improve reading and spelling skills.
3. We highlight key vocabulary in the movie directly where we can but the subtitles means that ALL vocabulary is picked up and displayed.
4. Some schools have headphones in their ICT suite and some do not. Or as a teacher you may not want the noise of a movie playing on one machine to disturb other parts of the class. Subtitles mean the sound can remain off, if needed.
5. Shared multimedia text – the class will be reading the subtitles, hearing the audio and seeing the animation as as a group. This means that reflection or extension work post playing the movie can be confidently delivered knowing the subtitles will have helped everyone to better understand the concepts Tim & Moby are delivering.
6. Pausing – stopping the action is a tip we’ve promoted before. But with subtitles on you can stop and focus on key vocabulary too, encourage note taking or allow the class to catch up on specific points.
7. You can turn the subtitles on and off at any point, without interrupting the movie. This means you remain in control of displaying the text.

We’re sure you will find other ways to use the subtitles to suit certain teaching experiences. If you have a tip or trick of your own please share it below.

First things first. Watch The Writing Process movie so Tim and Moby can take you through the process of writing, step by step.

Start to build your plot. Makes sure it has structure – a clear beginning, middle and end. Make sure your plot has a purpose and that your characters are interesting.

Watched that movie? Have an Oscar worthy story and plot? Good. Now onto Step 2.

Step 2. PUT THOSE WORDS INTO SOUND & MOTION – ADAPTATION

Next you need to adapt your story so it can be filmed by creating a script and storyboard.

Script writing

Writing convincing dialogue is one of the toughest aspects of script writing. We suggest you get some great script tips from the Writing Dialogue movie.

Remember: the script should include stage directions too. You should consider what you will need to bring your script to life – try to think of props, actors and settings. Don’t forget to include the time of day (midday and midnight are tonally two very different times!), set the location, and actions of the characters in the scene.

This is an excellent guide to creating a professional looking movie script: How to format a screenplay .

TOP TIP! You can learn about what it takes to make a movie from our Film making movie.

Storyboarding

When the script is ready, a storyboard can help you set out the main parts of the plot to record. We use storyboards when we make a new BrainPOP movie.

TOP TIP! Download and print this blank storyboard to get started: BrainPOP UK storyboard.

Step 3. EQUIP YOURSELF – TIME TO GET TO WORK

There are a few ways you could choose to approach this.

1. Live acting: You’re going to need a camcorder or phone with a camera function to record your movie, actors, a studio space and costumes. And find someone to shout “CUT!”
2. Green screen: You might also want to use chroma screen technology (here is a guide to using chroma key with Windows Movie Maker and a great blog post by Sheffield South Learning center).
3. Stop motion animation: You could use claymation like Wallace and Gromit, papercraft like “Star Wars in 2 minutes” or using physical objects like the amazing “Dot. The world’s smallest stop-motion animation“. Have a read of this wonderful guide to stop motion animation for beginners on Photojojo.
4. Audio play: If you don’t have access to a camera, you could just record your script as a podcast play – a fun challenge on its own! Try Podium.
5. Digital animation: There are lots of amazing animation tools online. Try Anithings (animations), Zooburst (3D pop up ebooks), Xtranormal (you type and the characters talk) and Comic life (make a comic form your images) and many more. Or you may be a Flash guru.

Do you have any tips for aspiring young Spielbergs?