BrainPOP Top 10 List for 2013

Enjoy our annual top 10 list outlining special developments at BrainPOP in 2013. Subscribe to the blog and be the first to hear about the latest developments at BrainPOP all year long!

10) Read All About It!

BrainPOP’s SVP of Product Management, Karina Linch, was interviewed for an article in the Wall Street Journal about the importance of mastering fractions in the early grades. Game Up game, Battleship Numberline, took center stage as writer Sue Shellenbarger took a closer look at some of the effective tools to teach this often difficult topic. We’re thrilled such a valuable game is part of our GameUp collection

9) BrainPOP Love – by the Numbers

We’re feeling the love! BrainPOP has hit some milestone numbers this year. We’re proud to say we now have over 400,000 members of BrainPOP Educators. And, the growth doesn’t stop there! We’ve risen to more than 40,000 likes on Facebook and almost 14,000 followers on Twitter. Thank you all for the support!

8) BrainPOP Educators Redesign Complete!

It’s been a few years in the making, but BrainPOP Educators finally has a new look and feel. We’ve brought together hundreds of printable items from graphic organizers to detailed game guides, videos, lesson plans and all sorts of fun stuff. Every BrainPOP, BrainPOP Jr Topic and GameUp game has it’s own landing page with specific support content to help you get the most out of the resource. More importantly, BrainPOP Educators is now a portal to the Mixer and My BrainPOP.  Now more than ever a BrainPOP Educators account brings loads of additional functionality to your BrainPOP experience!

7) BrainPOP ELL Completed Level 3

Over the summer, BrainPOP ELL completed level 3, rounding out the collection to include 90 full lessons for teaching beginning to advanced English language. Moving past the basics, BrainPOP ELL’s newest level introduces content that is more closely aligned to the content you’ll find on BrainPOP and BrainPOP Jr.

6) Common Core State Standards Alignment

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the Common Core Standards are a reality in the current American educational landscape.  At BrainPOP Educators, we spent the entire summer going through each of the standards and aligning them not only with BrainPOP movie content, but with our games, lesson plans and support resources.  You can learn about our processes and how to find the alignments on our Common Core homepage.

5) Lesson Ideas for GameUp

Each and every game on GameUp has a rich set of teaching resources designed to help you implement the game most effectively with students. This year we made those resource collections accessible from only one click away.  Clicking “lesson ideas” on each GameUp Game page brings you to those collections.

4) GameUp (k-3)

In the spring, GameUp made its way to BrainPOP Jr. giving K-3 students access to a number of high-quality educational games. You’ll find K-3 friendly games from familiar game developers like Common Sense Media, New Mexico State University, Space Science Institute, State of Play, Center for Game Science, and the Electric Company. Like our games on the original GameUp, you’ll find some helpful lesson ideas pages to guide you in utilizing these games with your students.

3) KAPi award

Early in 2013 BrainPOP’s GameUp received a KAPi award for the Best Educational Technology. Award winners are selected from a pool of over 700 contenders and we’re honored to have been recognized among so many notable products such as LittleBits, Kinect Sesame Street, Kindle Fire HD Freetime, MakerFaire and Toca Boca.

2) Moby-bility

This year Apple released iOS 7, the Microsoft Windows 8 tablet got tons of buzz, and more and more schools encouraged use of mobile devices for 24/7 learning.  BrainPOP was all over mobile news – our Featured Movie app was one of the first iOS 7 educational apps to be featured on the Apple App store. The Explorer Edition of our Featured Movie app became a valuable resource within a Kindle Freetime subscription, we participated in promotions with Verizon, and so much more.

1) My BrainPOP Launch

You asked and we delivered! We officially opened My BrainPOP to all qualified subscribers in October, making it possible for teachers to track learning accomplishments from game play, activities, quizzes, and more. If you haven’t explored this exciting tool, check out our FAQ section to learn more.

What were your highlights using BrianPOP this year?  Let us know in the comments below!