BrainPop
Last but certainly not least, this tool gives each subject its own distinct category, and within this category there are a bunch of activities and resources you can explore. For instance, under the English category, there are study tips, an informative list of famous authors & books, as well as information about writing, which includes but is not limited to how to properly cite sources, copyright, blogs, etc. This is a great informative website which provides links to numerous resources that will be extremely helpful to students.
This will be an extremely important resource to have in English class particularly, as it provides crucial information about important topics, such as citations, copyright, etc. which will help the students better prepare for their essay. It will also give them an idea of what the right kind of format for English looks, and additionally, will help better prepare them for their future, in terms of moving to a higher institution of learning, such as university. It will be less of a shock for them to learn it now rather than just finding out for the first time about these different kinds of topics in unversity that they had never even heard of .As teachers, it is important to keep that in mind as we constantly look for new opportunities to challenge and help our students grow and develop. This website allows the students to explore a wide variety of topics, and each subcategory provides a substantiate amount of information, and inherently teaches the students to be resourceful. It also has activities that the students can do, should they find the resources boring.
This then relates to breaking down that barrier of traditional teaching. All students are diverse learners, some do not learn effectively by sitting in class and listening all day. Some may have short attention spans, there are also students with special learning needs and disabilities, and it's important to adjust the lesson plan to be able to accomodate these. BrainPop provides an alternative for the students who learn better visually. The site is colourful, and exciting, and intriguing. The use of colour is especially important to those who are visual learners, they need to actually be interested in the information for them to retain it effectively. I believe the same can be said of the majority of students. BrainPop is limitless in terms of its creativty and subject matter. It has numerous activities and resources for each subject, and the student is free to explore all of them for as long as they'd like. It's not time consuming if it intrigues the students. Also, if they don't understand something that was discussed in class, they can always go to BrainPop and try and see if they could find out more about it. Of course, I understand that that's not always going to work, and that sometimes they will have to come in and see the teacher, but it's a good option to have.
In BrainPop's Terms of Service, it clearly states that anyone under the age of 18 may not use the site without authorization and/or supervision of a parent and/or legal guardian. It also states that for educators, they may not use the website on behalf of the materials without authorization of their parents and/or legal guardians as well.
