We recently asked on the Edugeek forum if anyone would be willing to help us research integrating BrainPOP UK into their school VLEs.
The response from the Edugeek community was amazing (a dedicated blog post about that another time). We’re still collating the research but we wanted to show you an example of how generous and helpful some people can be.
The below are two screencasts made by James May, ICT Manager at St Margaret’s CE Junior School. They are evaluating the Its Learning VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) platform for their school.
Obviously one of the major considerations when buying a VLE is ease of use and ability to integrate the products you know and love. Our request was just the excuse he needed to apply his growing Its Learning skills.
The first movie shows how he inserted our new POPbox (our POPbox shows the current featured movie and can be embedded into a webpage):
The second shows how he linked BrainPOP UK movies directly into a “discussion” page, using an iFrame technique (using an auto-login URL we supplied so the user doesn’t need to login to BrainPOP UK to access the resources). iFrames can show “a webpage within a webpage”. This is useful as the teacher can link directly to an individual movie, invite comments and the pupil doesn’t need to necessarily leave the VLE.
Huge BrainPOP UK thanks to James for his time.
What does this tell us?
- BrainPOP UK is pretty easy to integrate into your VLE. The techniques James showcases here are fairly standard and could be replicated in the vast majority of VLEs. We’re building a set of “How to” pages for each of the major VLEs in the UK. If you are unsure, let us know and we’ll help.
- If you don’t ask, you don’t get. We are very grateful to the EduGeekers for their support and experience.
