16 Ways to Use TinyTap in Your Classroom

TinyTap is a fantastic free iPad app and Android app for building fun and interactive review games. With the app you can create games based on pictures, diagrams, videos, and icons. Students can play your games on their iPads, Android tablets, or in the web browser on their laptops. Speaking of playing games, TinyTap recently published a game that features sixteen ways to use TinyTap in your classroom. That game is embedded below.


TinyTap games can be shared through Google Classroom as well as through email and social media.

Dog Detective - Do You Speak Dog?

If you have followed this blog for more than a month or two, you've probably figured out that I am passionate about dogs and animal rescue. My personal Facebook feed is littered with updates from the various shelters and rescue groups that I support. Yesterday, a neat resource came through my feed that I think is worth sharing here too.

Be a Dog Detective is an article and video that illustrates what a dog's body language can tell you. The visuals show examples of happy dogs, scared dogs, territorial dogs, and dogs that want to play. Further, Be a Dog Detective shows you when it might be safe to pet a dog and when to leave a dog alone. The video is embedded below.

How Do We Know What Color Dinosaurs Were?

How Do We Know What Color Dinosaurs Were? is a new TED-Ed lesson that answers a question I often had in school. In the lesson we learn how scientists examine the melanosomes of fossilized feathers to determine the colors of some dinosaurs. The lesson explains how the physics of light and color eventually lead scientists to their conclusions.

How Do We Know What Color Dinosaurs Were? is appropriate for middle school and high school students. Read below the video for some resources appropriate for elementary school students.


Dinosaster is an online game in which students move a dinosaur across a timeline in a Mario Brothers-like style of running and jumping. The object of the game is to hit each dinosaur bone along the way. When a new bone is grabbed a new fact card about a dinosaur appears on the screen. The object is to get all the cards and discover why the dinosaurs became extinct.

The Natural History Museum hosts a directory of names, facts, and figures for more than 300 dinosaurs. One of the ways that you can search through the database is by country. Select the "in your country" option to find the dinosaurs that may have roamed the land in what is now your country. The search results will display a grid of drawings the types of dinosaurs in your country. Click on the images to learn more the dinosaurs.

The Walking With Dinosaurs apps (free iPad app, free Android app) use a bit of augmented reality to take students on a virtual walk with dinosaurs. To use the apps you have to print out the "targets" that when scanned reveal a dinosaur's story. The apps also allow your students to include pictures of themselves in settings with the dinosaurs that they learn about through the app.

Digital Note-Taking with OneNote

This is a guest post from Beth Holland (@brholland) of EdTechTeacher - an advertiser on this site.

One of the most powerful tools available to students these days may be Microsoft's note-taking app: OneNote. Unlike the rest of the Office Suite, you can download OneNote for FREE on any device - iPad, laptop, Android, even Chromebooks!

To get started, download the FREE app and then login with either a FREE Microsoft Online account or an Office 365 account (free with a license to Office for Education). Not only can notes contain text, links, and images, but also handwriting (if on a tablet), audio recording, videos, file attachments, and a number of paper backgrounds. Additionally, OneNote can also be used for PDF annotation. Because OneNote is associated with an online account, notes automatically sync to the cloud and can be accessed on any device.

Two features distinguish OneNote from other note-taking apps like Evernote. First, notes can be shared and collaboratively edited in real time - much like Google Docs. This includes collaborative handwriting when on tablets. Next, OneNote notes can be opened and edited in multiple locations at the same time. Consider a student taking notes in OneNote on a laptop or Chromebook while inserting photos from their phone.

Finally, if your school does have Office 365, the new OneNote Class Notebook is an amazing resource. Teachers can create shared notebooks with their students to easily disseminate class content, collect work, and provide feedback by visiting onenote.com/classnotebook and signing in with their Office 365 account.

To learn more about using OneNote in the classroom and the OneNote Class Notebook, check out the video below.


Beth will be a featured speaker at the February 1-3, 2016 EdTechTeacher Innovation Summit.