Product Review of BrainPOP

BrainPOP was founded in 1999 with the purpose of using animated, visually aesthetic media to foster student learning and aid educators. The developer’s renowned educational materials include BrainPOP Jr. (K-3), BrainPOP Español, BrainPOP ESL, and GameUp™. BrainPOP can be used in many ways ranging from introducing concepts to demonstrating difficult problems
Website: https://www.brainpop.com/
What Users Love About the App
“BrainPOP is great for taking topics and explaining them at a middle school level. Additionally, the articles and readings associated with the topic videos are great and relevant. This product saves the science teacher countless hours trying to translate high-level science concepts into student-friendly language.”
“I like the advantages of having a chance to search CCSS standards to see what videos correlate. I also like having interactive quizzes that relate to the videos and that students can have immediate feedback after each question or find out their score at the end of the quiz. I like the vocabulary materials and activity sheets that students can use to work with a partner.”
“The program brings engaging and fun videos that support learning in all subject areas. Videos are kept current so the topics include current events, holidays, and even major disasters or news stories. The characters are likable and kids really respond to the videos positively.”
“This product has a range of videos that break down each subject in a student-friendly and age-appropriate manner. It allows teachers to have an engaging way to introduce information and new topics to students along with quizzes that assess students’ knowledge. It meets the needs of auditory and visual learners and has closed captioning as well to support deaf students or those who need extra visual aids. Quizzes are included to assess student retention of information as well as games and activities to further inform and engage students in learning about a topic.”
“This product provides engaging videos for classroom and home use. It uses student-friendly vocabulary that helps the students gain additional knowledge on a topic. The students get to know the characters and feel connected to them.”
What Users Dislike About the App
“I would love for there to be even more videos! At times I go on, hoping to find a video on a specific topic, and am unable to locate anything that would work.”
“Add the student log in to the “MyBrainPop” app so that students can use their devices to access this option. The kids love using their own electronics so this would just make it more engaging.”
“I would want more accessibility, like through ps3, Xbox, Wii. This would allow teachers to use the new learning tools students crave and couple them to lessons for common core and entertainment.”
“I would improve the function for testing. I would like for the questions to be a bit more challenging. Have different levels of questions so students can access the curriculum based on their learning ability. I would also add a component in which the teacher gets a report of the student’s progress. Lastly, I would add a parent component in which the parents are aware of how their child is performing.”
“I would like to see a vocabulary section added in where students can search for the vocabulary terms that they hear about in the video. Please keep adding more topics.”
“If I could change anything, I wish there was a way for teachers to get a report of student quiz scores in a concise report. As the student app works now, student scores are stored in the app but there is no connection to the teacher. When I want to record their scores, I have to go around to each student individually.”