Dr. Avraham Kadar, Founder and CEO of BrainPOP
- Dr. Avraham Kadar, CEO and Founder of BrainPOP
BrainPOP, privately owned by FWD Media Inc, is a group of award winning, subscription-based websites that offer over 1000 animated videos and related materials on 7 K-12 educational topics including Health, Math, Social Studies, Science, Engineering and Tech, Art and Music and English (Wikipedia, 2012). The website collection includes BrainPOP (K-12), BrainPOP Jr. (K-3), BrainPOP Espanol and BrainPOP ESL . BrainPOP is aligned with K-12 US curriculum standards and offers a variety of subscription options for schools and families. The website also includes many free features including BrainPOP Educatiors, which provides resources including Lesson Plans and activity sheets as well as professional development training, GameUP, a collection of free online games which are also aligned with curriculum standards and a mobile app for the Featured Movie. Although created in the Web 1.0 era, BrainPOP is Web2.0 ready, for it requires no special hardware or software and is compatible with PCs, MACs, interactive whiteboards, projectors and learner response systems. For more information about BrainPOP’s services (paid and free), visit the site’s ‘About Us’ page or take an animated video ‘Tour’ through the various services.
CEO, Dr. Avraham Kadar M.D., pediatrician and immunologist, originally founded BrainPOP in the US in 1999 as a creative way to inform his young patients about their ailments. This creative desire spawned the first of BrainPOP’s educational animated videos. To put Dr. Kadar’s vision into action, the BrainPOP team includes educators, animators and writers which continually adds new material and updates the site in response to its online community of teachers and parents (Wikipedia 2012). Dr. Kadar is a true entrepreneur, for along with BrainPOP, he has also founded AditAll, LLC and Dynamic Video, LLC. Dr. Kadar is also the president of the Naomi Foundation, dedicated to preserving the legacy of his wife and her passions for teaching and learning. On top of all his entrepreneurial and charitable commitments, Dr. Kadar also works at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine as an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Division of Allergy and Immunology (Bloomberg Businessweek).
As an educator, I was impressed by the extensive offerings of the BrainPOP family of websites and how it has grown and adapted to Web 2.0 platforms and 21st Century Learning goals. I was especially happy to see the free services offered alongside the subscription services. I have already created a BrainPOP Educator account and look forward to exploring it further. On a more personal level, who wouldn’t be inspired, or rather awed, by Dr. Kadar’s accomplishments. He offers hope to those who want to continue on in their chosen profession, but still take opportunity to explore entrepreneurial goals.
References:
Avraham Kadar: Executive Profile & Biography – Businessweek (2012). Retrieved from Bloomberg Businessweek website: http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=39829655&privcapId=8142708&previousCapId=8142708&previousTitle=FWD%20Media,%20Inc.
BrainPOP (2012). Retrieved from: http://www.brainpop.com/
Photo of Dr. Avraham Kadar Retrieved from: Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. http://www.flickr.com/photos/brainpop_uk/2864786831/sizes/s/in/photostream/.
The Naomi Foundation. Retrieved from: http://naomi.org/
Wikipedia (2012) BrainPop. Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrainPop.
Posted in: Week 04: Entrepreneur Bootcamp
mackenzie 2:39 pm on June 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
As a science teacher from way back I have watched BrainPop videos before but would never use them in my classroom and certainly wouldn’t pay for them. To me they are the junk food of education, fun while you are experiencing them, but have little or no nutritional value. Maybe they would be fun for kids to share with parents. Just my honest educators opinion!
gillian 9:16 am on June 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hey Steve,
I appreciate your honesty. As an adult educator, I could see little use for them, but I did think they looked like fun for younger grades. I also liked the idea of the educator community and some of the other free features.
gillian
mackenzie 12:58 pm on June 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Gillian,
Hope that my last comment didn’t offend, it was not aimed at you but at resources like this one. I really enjoyed reading your piece about the founder and his venture, I had no idea he was so accomplished. I just have such a viceral reaction to these types of products. Although, I agree that they are fun and could be a great site for students to visit outside of the formal learning timetable. I wonder how students would review these videos? They are funny!
Cheers, Steve
jtpatry 12:05 pm on June 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Steve,
I have used BrainPop in the classroom as a supplemental piece to learning. I agree with you that it shouldn’t take away from the “formal setting” of the teaching experience in the classroom. Yes, as adults we find these types of characters irritating, but the videos aren’t targeting adults. I know the students certainly get a kick out of them. What I really like about BrainPop, is that it really helps simplify concepts with great visuals especially for students with ESL (there are many free ones). There are also great resources for educators to use aside from the video components to assist teachers with lesson concepts.
I got a kick out of your term “junk food for education” and if left alone to its own consumption, yes can be very unhealthy. But like anything, we need to understand that there a balance is necessary, and it’s okay to dabble in junk once in awhile!
Thanks for you open and honest opinion Steve.
Cheers,
Jon
gillian 7:44 am on June 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Steve – no worries and certainly no offense! As I said your response was honest. I myself found Moby to be quite annoying but he appears to have quite a fan following amongst the younger kids if you check out the Flickr photostream! Apparently 25% of US schools subscribe to BrainPOP and there is also a BrainPOP UK version.
To each his own?
Cheers back 🙂
gillian