BrainPop

Kids love Tim and Moby. Teachers love the quick, engaging, and relevant videos.  But did you know there is so much more to BrainPop than videos and quizzes?  

In the last several years BrainPop has been busy developing new tools and partnering with other quality organizations to become more than just a platform to students to consume information.  They have a variety of tools that allow students to interact with material and concepts in an exciting way.  They are promoting the practice of having students actively creating rather than just consuming.  Awesome!

A little history.  Last year I went through training to become a Certified BrainPop Educator.  The program was phenomenal!  Unlike a lot of other "ed-tech" companies, BrainPop actually understands teaching. They have teachers on staff, and their practices are aligned with current pedagogical research.  Seriously, I was blown away!  The tools they have built into the platform are extremely user friendly and require kids to use critical thinking skills.

These tools are available on almost every BrainPop topic.  If you aren’t sure where to start, I would suggest looking at their standards alignment. On this page you can search by state, content, and grade level, and it will show you a document with all the BrainPop topics organized by standards.

I know that some of you already using some of these tools, but I wanted to provide a quick overview of each tool so you can know what is available.  Each tool also has a link to a more indepth resource page where you can learn more about each tool, see teachers using it in real classrooms, and view some examples. (Click on the red title.)

In case you are interested, the BrainPop Certified Educator training is free and completely online.  You do need to apply though.  You can find more information here, or I would be happy to chat with you to share my experience.

This year I was required to re-up my certification by watching a recorded webinar and completing an activity.  The good news is that by doing this, they gave our school a complimentary coding package for the remainder of this school year!  This is a great opportunity to look at ways to engage students, and give them new ways to show their learning.

Creative Coding

Students create their own projects to show what they know about a topic using code either with block based programming or text programming. No previous coding experience is necessary, there are tutorials built in!

Make a Map

Students create a concept map to show their understanding of what they are learning.  Students can use pictures, words and clips from the video to complete their concept map.  Teacher can see student work in their dashboard, so this an option for a formative assessment.

Make a Movie

This is a simple video creation tool that allows students to create their own BrainPop style video.  What I love about this is that it is open ended enough to allow students to really show what they know, but with enough support and pre-made items to make it doable for all students.

Sortify

Students play a game where they have to try to clear the board by sorting the tiles into groups.  How students sort the tiles gives you an indication of how well they understand the concept.  It’s challenging, fun, and addicting!

TimeZone X 

Students have to “fix” history by putting the events in order.  The goal is to help students understand broad themes in history rather than just memorizing dates.

Game Up

Games from museums, universities, etc. vetted by BrainPop and related to the content. Some games are SnapThought enabled.

Meaning of Beep

Students use context clues as hints to try to guess a word.  This tool is also SnapThought enabled.

Newsela and Related Reading

BrainPop curates other resources to help support student understanding of the topics.

Finding new and exciting ways to engage our students in a constant challenge, but BrainPop is a great resources that provides teachers a platform to help students learn and show what they know in a variety of ways.  How will you engage your students?