MULTIMEDIA PRODUCT CRITIQUE #1: BRAINPOP JR.

Multimedia Product Critique #1

BrainPOP Jr.

Alexe Miles

EDIT 720

Coastal Carolina University

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Introduction

Todays society involves a never ending push towards integrating multimedia technology in the

classroom. There are numerous educational websites and apps all over the internet that claim they can

help boost student achievement and be beneficial towards helping students succeed in the classroom.

However, its often time consuming to try and research which websites students can use to better boost

their cognitive skills. In this paper, I will give you a product overview and analysis of the educational

website BrainPOP Jr. I will include step by step directions of how to navigate through the website as well

as include multimedia learning theories that are supported by BrainPOP Jr.

Product Overview

BrainPOP Jr. is an online educational website that is used to reinforce standards based content

areas such as English, Math, Science, Social Studies, Arts and Music, and Health. Each of these content

areas include videos as well as reinforcing extension activities with various comprehension skills and

strategies to reinforce instruction and increase student achievement in the classroom. On BrainPop Jr.

there is a paid version required to be able to have full access to all of the videos BrainPOP Jr. offers.

However, there are a few videos that are free that only require teachers to sign in with a username and

password. Some schools offer access to this website through their district website. If using the free

version, teachers need to create an account with a username and password. After creating the account,

teachers simply have to log in and begin searching for videos based on content areas. To search a skill or

strategy, teachers just have to type in the search box up top and any videos pertaining to that keyword

will pull up. In the screen shot below, Ive typed in the keyword inferences and you see the video
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choices that pulled up for me to view.

Because the videos are tagged by keywords when searching, there may be numerous videos that pull

up. Teachers or students just have to look through the videos and pick which one they feel is most

appropriate and close to the content they want viewed. For my keyword, if I choose the first option

Make Inferences a new screen will pop up with the video ready to play (see below). You can also

switch from a small screen to a full screen to help see the video and text narration better. There are also

options for closed captioning as well as the option to print the notes on the screen in an interactive

notebook format.

Each video consists of 2 main characters (Annie and Moby) who narrate text being displayed on the

screen. Each video is approximately 4-5 minutes long. After watching the video, teachers and students
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have many options for extension activities to reinforce information presented in the video. The

screenshot below shows the options available for these extension activities.

One option is to have students complete an online or paper and pencil quiz. The quizzes usually are 5

questions long and narrate each question and choice to students. The quizzes are differentiated and

provide an easy and hard quiz. The easy quizzes are all multiple choice and the hard quizzes are

written short answer questions. Other extension activities include making maps about the content,

games to reinforce content, writing prompts to extent content, etc. The writing prompt extension

activity will allow students to type in answers and print them out to turn in. This is also a great chance

to practice typing skills on a computer.

Multimedia Learning Theories

BrainPOP Jr. is a great tool to use as a multimedia learning tool because it complies with several

theories that have been proven to increase student learning. One theory BrainPOP Jr. supports is

Mayers theory of dual-coding. This theory suggests that students learn through both verbal narration

and visually animated formats (Mayer and Sims, 1994, p389). During the videos on BrainPOP Jr., the

animated video is playing while the text is simultaneously being narrated on the screen. Because the
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animation and narration happen at the same time, this too supports Mayers theory that a students

problem solving transfer will be more successful if these two processing systems (verbal and visual) are

presented at the same time and coordinated (Mayer and Sims, 1994, p391).

A second theory supported by BrainPOP Jr. is Mayer and Pilegards principle of segmenting to

reduce and eliminate excessive essential overload. This term essential overload refers to the amount

of essential cognitive processing required to understand instruction exceeds the learners cognitive

capacity (Mayer and Pilegard, 2014, p316). The principle of segmenting refers to instruction being given

in learner-paced sections rather than in one continuous section. BrainPOP Jr. videos are short segments

of content conduced to information only relevant to standards and objectives that students have to

know. These videos also give students the option to stop, pause, and/or repeat the videos in order to

correlate to the learners cognitive ability and capacity. Mayer and Pilegard state that one suggestion

when segmenting is to allow students to control the pace at which presentations are given in class

(Mayer and Pilegard, 2014, p320). The replay option gives the students a chance to replay the video in

case they did not fully understand the objectives. The pause and stop option allows students to stop the

video at any time to give themselves a chance to take in and comprehend the information being

presented on the video. A second principle Mayer and Pilegard suggests to reduce essential overload

and is supported by BrainPOP Jr. is the principle of modality. This principle states that people learn

more deeply when words are spoken rather than printed (Mayer and Pilegard, 2014, p317). BrainPOP Jr.

videos provide narrated text to prevent the learner from having to watch the animation and read the

text at the same time resulting in essential overload.

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Summary

Overall, BrainPOP Jr. is a great online multimedia learning tool that can be used to help reinforce

content in the classroom as well as at home. It is very engaging and entertaining to students and keeps

them interested in content. Its very user friendly for students, and is easy enough for them to use on

their own independently. This website would be a great choice to use during rotations to reinforce

content taught during instruction. It coincides with all subject area standards so teachers can make sure

students are learning content related to their grade level. The extension activities are also great for

teachers to use as informal assessments to check that students are understanding the content

presented in the videos. It also provides research based principles and theories that have been proven

to increase student transfer of information. I would highly recommend trying this multimedia tool in

your classroom to help achieve student success.

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References

Mayer, R.E. & Pilegard C. (2014) Principles for managing essential processing in multimedia learning:

segmenting, pre-training, and modality principles. In R. E. Mayer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of

Multimedia Learning. (pp. 316-344). New York: Cambridge.

Mayer, R.E., Sims, V.K. (1994). For whom is a picture worth a thousand words? Extensions of a dual-coding

theory of multimedia learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 389-401.