TinyTap is a company that is best known for its iPad app that lets teachers create educational games to share with their students. I’ve used it and written about it for almost a decade. Recently, TinyTap made a fantastic update. You can now use TinyTap to create your own educational games in the web browser on your computer.
To create your own educational game on TinyTap simply head to TinyTap.com and click “create.” From there you’ll see a menu of six game types to create. (There is an intermediate prompt tosign-in or sign-up if you haven’t already done so). You can then watch tutorials on game design or simply jump into creating a game. All games are created in a slide-by-slide basis. Within each slide you can add pictures, text, and audio prompts. You can choose how your students interact with questions and prompts in your game. They can interact by tapping, clicking, circling objects, matching objects, typing, or speaking. Here’s a short tutorial on making a shape puzzle game on TinyTap.
If you’d like some inspiration for creating your own TinyTap games, browse through the public gallery of teacher-created games. The gallery is organized according to age, topic, and skill. When you find a game that you like you can use it as is or copy it and customize it in your account.
Applications for Education
One of the things that I’ve always appreciated about TinyTap is that you can make games that are perfectly tailored to your students’ needs.
TinyTap games can be shared with your students via Google Classroom and through the TinyTap platform. Additionally, you can link to the games in any LMS. Games can also be embedded into blog posts and websites as I’ve done with this fun dinosaur game.
