Deconstructing BrainPOP – A Critical Perspective

Professor and founder of the Media Education Lab Renee Hobbs and Consultant Rhys Daunic (The Media Spot) created this “critical analysis” screencast deconstructing BrainPOP – as both a company and a content provider. They illustrate how any BrainPOP topic animation can be a terrific entry point to studying important concepts of media literacy including relationship to audience, inquiry and authorship, and techniques such as humor, inquiry and visual explanations of important vocabulary. They finish the video by exploring their thoughts about the values that BrainPOP espouses – that can be gleaned from watching each and every BrainPOP animation.

If you are planning to have students create their own BrainPOP style animations, we encourage you to have similar conversations about the structure of each video with them.