BrainPOP UK needs some VLE Advice - help wanted!

[ChrisBrainPOP]

Hey all,

I've been speaking to @russdev about how BrainPOP UK might work in a VLE. He suggested I might want to throw it open to the Edugeek crowd to see if anyone wanted to try BrainPOP in their VLE and tell us how they did it?

You've probably never heard of us (which is fine, we're small and new). We're essentially a cross curricular animation content supplier where the content is accessed via the browser (Flash based, SSO, subscription). You can find us all over the internet so I'll leave Google to do it's job if you want to know more.

I'm happy to offer cool merch freebies to any NM or VLE Manager who wants to give it a go + a free 6 month subscription to BrainPOP UK resources to the school of your choice.

All we want to know is: how could/did/didn't you get BrainPOP UK working in your VLE and can you tell us that story step by step (even screenshots/capture if you're feeling particularly generous) so we can tell our users how you did it? Or any ideas you have about making that integration easier?

One thing we can do is create automatic authentication URLs into specific sections/pages of the site. We could supply links to specific pages, e.g. drilling down to the Science category page, or even a specific resource.

If anyone is interested we're looking for the usual suspects: Kaleidos, Sharepoint, Fronter, Moodle, Frog and so on. We want to understand it from those working in schools with VLEs every day. That's the perspective we want.

We'll set you up a 30 day free trial and leave you to it. We can answer most things in this thread or by email/twitter (@brainpop_uk) if you want.

If you're interested PM me or email infoatbrainpopdotcodotuk

This is a genuine request - huge thanks to anyone who offers to lend a hand!

Chris

Chief Operating Officer, BrainPOP UK

[Edu-IT]

I've probably not understood you correctly.. but, here goes.

Can the content be exported and then imported directly onto your VLE, is this what you're trying to look at, or are you talking about ways to point people to the BrainPOP website?

[GrumbleDook]

IIRC (and Chris can correct me) is that the materials remain on the BrainPop site but you embed the files into your VLE (YouTube stylie), but BrainPop can be setup so that there is single-sign-on between the VLE and BrainPop.

If I read the question right it is about whether this works, what could be improved, how you made it work, how easy is it to use, etc ....

[secretlife]

so...Fun Stuff for children AND Moodle? two of my favourite things - (after alcohol and chocolate) so I have just counted myself in

[Edu-IT]

IIRC (and Chris can correct me) is that the materials remain on the BrainPop site but you embed the files into your VLE (YouTube stylie), but BrainPop can be setup so that there is single-sign-on between the VLE and BrainPop.

If I read the question right it is about whether this works, what could be improved, how you made it work, how easy is it to use, etc ....

I see. Thanks for the explanation.

Just having a look at BrainPOP now.

[russdev]

As Tony says.

Yes the content stays hosted on the brainpop servers. Got to say what I have seen of it is very good anyway I am in with the real boss of the company

[ame="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccarts/4288218714/"]on Flickr - Photo Sharing![/ame]

[ChrisBrainPOP]

@Edu-IT No, BrainPOP UK movies cannot be exported e.g. as SCORM objects. All content is held behind a SSO. So I guess we're talking "about ways to point people to the BrainPOP website".

• There is no pupil assessment that can be recorded and ingested into any VLE assessment system.
• BrainPOP UK movies and quizzes are not, at the moment, available outside BrainPOP UK spaces/channels. There are no BrainPOP UK SCORM packages.
• We do create some special movies and upload them to our Youtube channel or via our partnerships but essentially all our resources are only accessible via authentication to the BrainPOP UK website.
• We do not, at the moment, provide special versions of BrainPOP UK for any exisiting VLE, such as a Sharepoint Webpart or Moodle repository.

So BrainPOP UK is simple, but that doesn't mean stupid.

We can build encrypted "auto sign on" URLs that you can embed into a space on your VLE, thus directing a user to the BrainPOP UK home page or resource without them being asked to use (or know) a BrainPOP UK login.

We will be very soon launching "POPboxes" which will alllow our Featured movie to be embedded free via a javascript snippet (but no quiz or exterior resources). We've had problems with browser security settings stripping the code. I can get this code snippet to anyone who wants to test it if you ask me.

I hope some of the above helps.

By the way we've had 3 x Moodle, 1 x Sharepoint and 1 x Fronter responses and thanks so very much to those who have volunteered. If there's anyone left who runs a different system than those listed above please let me know. Might as well try to collect 'em all

[ChrisBrainPOP]

We now have Frog and DB Primary volunteers. Thanks once again to everyone for your help. We're blown away. I can feel a blog post coming on.

[dwhyte85]

Hi Chris,

Spoke to a nice guy @ BrainPOP today regarding an extended trial. I can try within Studywiz, as far as I understood... it'd be a URL to embed using your JS or direct linking to your site (passing login credentials/auth details).

I will test this in Studywiz if you'd like or if you could let me know any other details.

[CyberNerd]

So why not use SCORM to distribute the links?

[ChrisBrainPOP]

@dwhyte85 - Thanks for the Studywiz offer. I spoke to Mat (our Support Manager you spoke to) who filled me in. Studywiz is one of the missing VLEs in our list so we'd be very grateful if you could find the time to test and write up your research. Your thoughts on how to do it are probably on the money. We're also looking for suggestions on how you would LIKE to populate Studywiz with BrainPOP UK resources (given an infinite amount of monkeys etc). Can you PM me to get things moving?

[russdev]

@David

I would PM or Email Chris. He is good at getting back to you. It is url pass by the way.

[dwhyte85]

@dwhyte85 - Thanks for the Studywiz offer. I spoke to Mat (our Support Manager you spoke to) who filled me in. Studywiz is one of the missing VLEs in our list so we'd be very grateful if you could find the time to test and write up your research. Your thoughts on how to do it are probably on the money. We're also looking for suggestions on how you would LIKE to populate Studywiz with BrainPOP UK resources (given an infinite amount of monkeys etc). Can you PM me to get things moving?

I'm not a teacher but... I would assume either direct linking using the encrypted URLs to a post on a desired class/set of classes (e.g, all Physics year 9)... it would be a 'fun task' rather than a homework. The issue would then be staff knowledge, most are pretty... poor on the IT ability scale, means it would then be an additional task for me :-).

Ideally, embedding the flash object within the post but I know this is going to be unlikely

[Edu-IT]

I'm not a teacher but... I would assume either direct linking using the encrypted URLs to a post on a desired class/set of classes (e.g, all Physics year 9)... it would be a 'fun task' rather than a homework. The issue would then be staff knowledge, most are pretty... poor on the IT ability scale, means it would then be an additional task for me :-).

Ideally, embedding the flash object within the post but I know this is going to be unlikely

If creating a hyperlink in StudyWiz is easy then creating a self sign in URL for BrainPOP is a walk in the park so staff should manage it.

[ChrisBrainPOP]

I'm not a teacher but... I would assume either direct linking using the encrypted URLs to a post on a desired class/set of classes (e.g, all Physics year 9)... it would be a 'fun task' rather than a homework. The issue would then be staff knowledge, most are pretty... poor on the IT ability scale, means it would then be an additional task for me :-).

Well, we try to make things as fun as we can. Have you seen our new boardroom table ;-)

What immediately springs to mind is how we can help you with the staff knowledge; to remove the burden from you. If we had a really good transcript of the process we could even build a BrainPOP animation that helped them understand what to do and e.g. an accompanying mock lesson plan to make it feel more comfortable. We're also building an auto login tool that will make this process falling-off-a-log easy.

We could even send awesome freebies to your school to hand out as rewards for the teacher that creates the best VLE page for BrainPOP resources.

There's lots we can do to help you - someone also suggested a VLE pack containing fun Tim and Moby images for hyperlinking. We could include this type of thing too. Sometimes the hardest thing is not just to get the content into the VLE but to get teachers appreciating your hard work and using the resource!