Unit 2: GameUp and My BrainPOP: The Student Experience
GameUp, BrainPOP’s game-based learning portal, hosts a wide variety of award-winning games. Logging in with a My BrainPOP student account activates innovative features that bring a new dimension to game play!
In this unit you will do the following:
- engage with a learning game.
- compose and submit 3 “snapthought” assessment items complete with useful explanations.
- explore the variety of teacher support materials on BrainPOP Educators.
- complete a round of “Sortify” – BrainPOP’s playful assessment game.
- test your own knowledge about GameUp by completing and submitting a final assessment quiz.
This unit should take roughly 1 hour.
If you do not have a personal My BrainPOP account, return to Unit 1.
For optimal experience, use a computer with a full featured web browser. Open this course in one window and open BrainPOP.com in another window. This allows you to read directions and follow them simultaneously.
GameUp is BrainPOP’s educational game portal featuring over one hundred games from dozens of game developers. We bundle the games with BrainPOP video content and exclusive support materials – all designed to help you and your students get the most out of a gameplay experience.
The exclusive BrainPOP SnapThought® tool appears on many GameUp games. It provides opportunity for students to snap screenshots of important game play moments and add written annotations. View the SnapThought® overview video to learn more about how the tool works.
Use your student username and password to login to BrainPOP.com – click GameUp – the button with the game controller. Or you can go directly to the GameUp homepage by visiting http://www.brainpop.com/games
Search for the term “SnapThought” and select a game to play.
If you want to figure out the game on your own, please do!
Notice: 1) Gameplay area, 2) Related BrainPOP videos, 3) Lesson ideas.
If you would like more support for getting started, choose the “lesson ideas” button and explore BrainPOP educators support resources for the game. (you must be logged in as a teacher for “lesson ideas” to appear.)
The BrainPOP Educators page provides the following support resources: 1) CCSS alignments, 2) support videos, 3) lesson plans, 4) support 5) game tips 6) printable graphic organizer
Clicking “Additional My BrainPOP Features” or “Essential Questions” can help guide your Snapthoughts as you play the game.
Click “PLAY GAME” (under the rotating game images) to return to the game.
Return to the game page, and begin playing! Use the SnapThought® tool to take up to 5 snapshots at important moments. Add written annotations to the snapshots and submit the entire collection to a class. You can only submit snapshots once per gameplay session. Unsubmitted snapshots will be saved in the My BrainPOP feed.
(for additional guidance with the snapthought, you may download the step guide below)
The SnapThought® is a flexible tool – to further explore creative approaches to using it, read this blog post. 
Sortify is BrainPOP’s playful assessment that encourages players to consider various ways to categorize data. This overview video demonstrates how to play the game:
Now Visit the Sortify landing page and choose a data set to play. As you categorize and sort, consider the various ways you think about the task.
After clearing the board, you can submit results to class.
After a group of students have played and submitted results from Sortify, BrainPOP provide teachers with a “Classview” of data collected from the game. This unique view into the collective understanding provide quick and actionable student data.
Notice the key: Darker green illustrates better performance on a category:
By quickly glancing across the spreadsheet and observing the darkness of green color, teachers can assess collective performance on categories that students explored. The darker the green, the more effectively the individual student demonstrated understanding of the category.
How would you use this data to inform your next steps?
BrainPOP has put great effort into choosing all the games on GameUp. Many of the titles have been designed to align with Common Core State Standards. This video explains our approach to our movie and game alignment. It also offers specific game titles that can be used to help students practice and achieve.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-y8Af128kc?showinfo=0&w=420&h=236]
Take a few minutes to reflect upon the value of using games like Sortify and features like Snapthought™ to help students achieve. How do these games and features address learning standards and your objectives in ways different from traditional learning resources? How would you implement these games or features into your instruction? What specifically would you like to try first with your students?
If you are logged in as a student, take a summative assessment to test what you remember about GameUp from this unit! Simply copy and paste this quiz code into the “enter code” field at the top of the BrainPOP page. You can submit the quiz score to your class.
Quiz Code: bpunit2test
