POPtalk

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

Related Posts:

• BrainPOP UK – a home educator perspective
• BrainPOP UK – A parent’s perspective
• From nothing to something – our Top 6 BrainPOP UK moments of 2009

We’ve been BrainPOPping in the UK for a year now so before we sign off to wish all of you a merry Xmas and happy new year we thought this is as good a time as any to stop and reflect back on an amazing year.

We sometimes say that a Tim & Moby movie takes your understanding of a concept “from nothing to something“. That also couldn’t be a better way of describing what we’ve been through in 2009.

There’s so many things we could list and the team will never agree on exactly what the top 6 should be, but we all think the following were pretty significant moments.

1. Our first customer!

You never forget your first time, so they say. Well our first ever customer was Okehampton College in Devon. Thank you for placing your trust in Tim, Moby and the BrainPOP UK team. We hope you’ve had a very BrainPOPpy year.

2. BETT 2009

If you’ve ever run or staffed a BETT stand you’ll know what a rush to the head it can be. We were a teeny tiny team at the start of the year and the sheer amount of tasks we needed to squeeze in took us by surprise. We thought we’d ticked all the many, many BETT boxes but we’d missed off one important thing: electricity. We just didn’t realise power was something you had to organise.

And for an online service electricity is pretty important.

Luckily our very able stand design company, BJA Designs, sorted us a last minute Sparky and we were up and running in time.

On the plus side our hard work paid off and we met 100′s of teachers, the vast majority of whom hadn’t heard of BrainPOP UK, and made some firm friends. Just don’t get us started on the amount of pens we ordered. It was also good experience for exhibiting at BETT 2010.

3. Teachmeet at the Scottish Learning Festival and multiple TeachMeet movie adaptions

Ollie Bray, a long time fan of BrainPOP (especially in Geography), asked us if we could produce a special one-off BrainPOP UK movie to inform people what a TeachMeet is all about. We’ve always been big supporters of CPD and TeachMeet – how could we refuse? You can see our TeachMeet movie on Youtube, where anyone can embed it into their own website.

Soon after, as tends to happen when an idea really starts to gain traction (go viral?), we were asked to do movie adaptions for Perth, Blackpool, East Lothian and Falkirk TeachMeets. Little known fact: If you ask for an adapted TeachMeet movie we put YOUR name into the famous Tim & Moby letter.

The TeachMeeters also kindly put the movie on the front page of the TeachMeet Wiki website. This year TeachMeet is going to happen across 3 nights: TEDxOrenda, AMPed (Amplified) and the TeachMeet itself.

As well as TeachMeet Takeover, where exhibitors open up a part of their stand for a TeachMeeter to “takeover” for half an hour to demo free and useful Web 2.0 type classroom tools. Naturally, we think that sounds really worthwhile and lots of fun so we voluteered too.

4. Our Swine Flu movie goes past 10,000 hits…then 20,000…then 30,000…

A little while back Swine Flu was a big headline topic. One thing BrainPOP does well is react quickly to classroom needs, when we are able.

In this instance we made a Swine Flu movie aimed at kids, to help answer some of the basic questions (“You can’t catch it from eating bacon, can you?”) and quell a few fears children may have.

We decided to upload it to Youtube and allow people to embed it in their own school blogs and websites. To keep an important topic free. We wrote all about our decision to do this on our blog: The little movie that could.

We got loads of favourable comments on the movie and it even ended up being reported in the TES and the Times Schoolgate blog.

5. Our first UK movie – Bonfire Night

BrainPOP UK is part of the global BrainPOP family. Our resources are currently nearly all anglicised versions from the incredible collection of movies on BrainPOP.com. But part of the appeal of a UK BrainPOP is to develop new UK resources that are meaningful to UK classrooms. Our first UK movie was Bonfire night. It was a UK subject scripted by a UK author. It was a very proud moment to finally launch a bit of BrainPOP history.

There’s lots more coming in 2010, but we won’t spoil the surprise just yet.

6. Listening to classroom stories

This is a fine entry as our last pick and a personal favourite. As well as the reviews BrainPOP UK has garnered over the last 12 months there’s little better than hearing from our users.

We love to tell classroom stories of how different teachers around the UK are using BrainPOP UK resources with their pupils. Whether you are a Newly Qualified Teacher, Home educator, Award winning ICT Specialist or Maths Teacher we’re happy to show off your BrainPOP thoughts on our blog.

We know there will be many more stories to tell in 2010 (2009 was just lighting the touchpaper for the BrainPOP fireworks coming in 2010) so we’ll simply wish you a very merry Xmas and happy new year from all the BrainPOPpers, from around the world.

Ho ho ho!

Related Posts:

• Sharing the TeachMeet Takeovers from BETT 2012
• BETTer late than never – highlights from BETT 2012
• Moving on from TeachMeet sponsorship
• Kismet at Kidsmeet
• Teachers Takeover BETT 2011

You may not know this but BrainPOP UK is popular within home educator networks, as well as schools.

We wanted to meet some of our home educators so we asked on our Facebook Page if we had any fans who, as home educators, might want to write about how they use BrainPOP UK as part of our Maths Focus Fortnight.

Sister Janet Icha from London quickly responded: “Yes, I would definitely like to do it – my boys think BrainPOP UK is GREAT!“.

So over to you Sister Janet, Joseph and Elijah!

“Whenever I am asked about what tools or methods I use whilst home-educating my children, BrainPOP UK is always at the top of my list of recommended resources. Why? Because it works. During recent BrainPOP time, my son Joseph interrupted:

“BrainPOP is the best website ever!! I like Moby best because he is silly.”

What is BrainPOP UK? It’s a website that has educational videos for primary and secondary age children, teaching about most subjects that our children learn in school – and more!

BrainPOP UK movies are approximately 5 minutes each and teach the viewer all about the subject in such an engaging, succinct and humorous manner that you can’t help but like the main characters Tim and Moby the Robot.

Specifically, Maths tends to be a subject for concern with most parents – but not if you use BrainPOP UK it isn’t! For example, as a parent, one of the things that I like most about BrainPOP UK is there are the usual functional videos such as decimals, prime numbers and how to measure circles.

But there are also movies which teach the theory of mathematics such as What is Calculus? What is it used for and by whom? Euclid or even (I’m showing off now!) the ‘Sieve of Eratosthenes‘ .

Of course, learning the history and theory helps children (and us adults!) have a much better and stronger understanding of any subject, and builds their confidence, which also strengthens their ability to use the subject matter.

So how do I use BrainPOP UK on a day to day basis?

Home-educating means we do not have the same time restrictions that are upheld within schools. We don’t necessarily spend one hour on one subject, then move to the next one, so we have the freedom and luxury of watching the same movie over and over again, or moving onto other movies that are connected to the same topic.

We have found the children have the time to not only learn about a specific theme or subject, but actually have the time and space to enjoy it and appreciate it without having to rush off to their next lesson or off to do something else.

My 12 year old son Elijah says:

“Brain POP UK is easy to use, because every thing is set out neatly. If there is a special film you want to watch quickly, you can go to the search box. The only thing I’d change is there should be a few longer movies, like 10 minutes. I want Tim and Moby to elaborate on some things like ‘PI’, and ‘Flight’ “

Because the movies are presented in such an engaging, light-hearted manner we have found a method which works very well for us:

1. We watch each video twice. During the viewing, we pause, rewind or stop when we need to in order to discuss what is being said, or even to link it to something else that we have been learning.
2. Then we try the graded version of the POP Quiz. Sometimes, I may print a quiz and allow the children to complete it later in the day. This is really to test to see not only how much they learned from watching the video, but also how much they remember from it. They usually remember almost everything – particularly the ‘jokes’.
3. We compete to see who can get the most correct answers - and/or who can say the answer the quickest!

Of course, school teachers have their resources and information given to them, which are all in line with the National Curriculum.

With home-educating I decide and plan what the children learn, how we learn it, and when.

On the Internet there are so many different resources, websites and locations that it can make your head spin and leave you (or me, actually) in confusion about what to do and how to do it.

BrainPOP UK’s teachers’ tools help greatly with this because everything is in one place. I don’t have to keep changing sites, looking for things or even worse, trying to remember what resource was where – it’s all there.

It also has Primary and Secondary resources organized according to the National Curriculum guidelines, so I can see year-by-year what school-based children are learning and what the standards are. There’s also a link that can even take me to videos related to the specific subjects we are working on.

It’s an easy and very efficient way of planning our days, weeks and learning years without having to rely on a vast amount of ‘classroom’ equipment such as books, CDs , whiteboards, blackboards etc.

We laugh a lot whilst working with BrainPOP UK – which absolutely re-inforces the learning process – particularly at the jokes in the movies and during the POP Quizzes which sometimes have funny comments or remarks within the questions.

My children are so enthusiastic about ‘going on BrainPOP UK’ that they don’t actually see it as ‘school work’ or ‘work’ – even when we do the quiz.

During their own free time, they choose to go on BrainPOP UK and watch interesting movies, so I know they find learning with this site fun (it’s also a great and safer alternative to TV/Internet).

We all find the site easy to navigate, accessible and practical to work with for both me as the adult and the children.

BrainPOP UK videos are interesting, contemporaneous, humorous and engaging for people of all ages.”

Many, many thanks Sister Janet Icha. We will be posting you out some lovely new Moby tshirts for your boys.

If any other home educators out there want to tell us how they use BrainPOP UK we’d be more than happy to hear what you’ve got to say.

Related Posts:

• Like mother like daughter like BrainPOP UK
• BrainPOP UK – A parent’s perspective
• From nothing to something – our Top 6 BrainPOP UK moments of 2009