Newest Advisor: Renaissance Woman Esther Wojcicki

Here at BrainPOP we strive to keep our content current, relevant and consistently engaging.   We work with content experts and advisors to assure the videos and interactive features meet your expectations.  This week we introduce our newest advisor: Esther Wojcicki.  Esther’s impressive list of accomplishments include: founder of Palo Alto High’s Journalism program, chair at Learning Matters and vice chair at Creative Commons not to mention frequent contributer at the Huffington Postand consultant for the Carnegie Foundation.  With these experiences, she brings insight to the development of BrainPOP content in language arts, journalism and social studies.

Esther enjoys BrainPOP because the “videos are easy to use, divided into logical categories, short but not too short and cover the material in an interesting way.” Also, working closely with students in journalism courses, she explains, “kids are expected to do some research themselves, find the information themselves and collaborate with their peers.  BrainPOP fits well into this new paradigm since kids can easily watch a variety of videos on their own and then join their group to share new information. Alternatively, they can watch together and then create some kind of project based on the new information they learned.”  Frequent readers of this blog know the myriad ways BrainPOP can be incorporated into classroom experience, thanks for the additional ideas Esther!

2 weeks ago, BrainPOP sponsored the Global Education Conference and Esther led a presentation on student driven service learning projects.  Click here to hear the webinar and learn how Esther’s educational endeavors are not just changing the role of teacher in classroom, but how her students are using class time to build projects that exist outside the scope of “normal” school.  Esther is a teacher and curriculum developer who recognizes the rapid changes in our world, gives power to her students and in turn makes educational experiences meaningful.  We are thrilled to have her share her expertise with us.  Also, be sure to follow her on twitter @EstherWojcicki.