
I love BrainPop – I really mean that! I have
used the American version with my classes for years and the children
(particularly S1, S2 and S6) love it! But I have used it with all year groups.
BrainPOP is an educational website with
Flash-based movies about maths, technology, health, science, humanities, arts
& music, and English. Most of the videos feature the site's recurring
characters, Tim and Moby.
According to Wikipedia:
‘Tim is a smart and useful teenager who does most of
the talking in the movies. He has brown hair and usually wears a white T-shirt
with a picture on it which relates to each movie’. He is 14 years old (but
sounds about 16).’
‘Moby is an orange robot who communicates in bleeping
noises (similar to R2D2).
He has three lights on his chest that light up every time he beeps and Tim
usually translates what he's saying. While Tim does most of the talking during
a movie, Moby usually helps out by fetching things for Tim and asking questions
about the topic they are talking about. As a robot, he can do lots of things that
Tim is unable to do (e. g. changing his hand into a freeze-ray, sending himself
back in time, removing his head).’
I was really pleased to
recently see that BrainPop has
launched a UK
version of the website with an English speaking Tim – although some of my
classes used to quite like the novelty of the voice in the American version.
The great things about the
videos is that they are all really short – just enough to capture and engage
children. There must be 100's videos on a diverse range of topics and many
of the videos are cross-curricular.
Topics include:
- Drawing (Take your doodling to the next level),
- Compass (How does
a compass know which way is North? What is "North" for that
matter?),
- Colons and Semicolons (Dots and commas that make
all the difference!),
- Chocolate (How does
chocolate get from the tree to the candysweet shelf? Follow Tim and Moby
on a mouthwatering field trip),
- Credit Cards (Find out why you need to think twice before you charge it!),
- Greek Gods (Learn all about the
strange and mysterious behavior of the gods worshipped by the Ancient
Greeks!),
- Area of polygons (Measuring polygons may look tricky, but
it's a snap, once Tim and Moby show you how it's done!),
- Cancer (What is
cancer? Why is it so dangerous?) and
- Nuclear energy (Unlock the awesome power of the atom
with Tim and Moby in this animated movie!).
I have mentioned BrainPop
before as I used them as an example in my 2008 Scottish Learning Festival
Presentation on Language,
Learners and the Power of New Technology.
BrainPop is a subscription
service but they always have sample videos that you can watch with your
classes. The best thing about them is that if there is a National Event or
Disaster they always make that video available for free for a while. For me, a
good example of this was the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004. After the event I was
looking for a simple way to teach Tsunamis to all my classes and Tim and Moby
provided the answer with their Tsunami Flash Video.
The other reason that I am
writing about Tim and Moby just now is that the BrainPop UK website is offering a free
trial until the middle of February. I’m already planning on using a number of
videos with my classes and we distributed the school username and password to
staff today. Lots of our teachers have already logged onto the site and
feedback has so far been very positive. BrainPop are also offering some Sponsorship at Teachmeet at BETT 2009.
More on BrainPop later in the week – but I would
be really interested to find out what you think of the resource.
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