Today we’ve invited Louise and her son J to share how they use BrainPOP at home. Having been an avid BrainPOP fan for well over a year J was super keen to tell us why he likes BrainPOP. We’ll hand you over to his Mum to take up the story…
“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 piece 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:
