TinyTap Children’s Authors
No matter how old you are, there will always be that list. That list of books and stories that you grew up on -the classics.
Reading a children’s book is an amazing experience -whether you’re 5 or 60 years old. But we seldom ask ourselves how incredible it must feel to be the artist behind these stories – the children’s authors.
Children’s authors are magicians with a pen (or a laptop, in these days), creating fantasy worlds and beautiful stories that often stay in a kid’s mind long after they’ve had some kids of their own.
So, in light of these amazing magicians and what their work has done for the world, we decided to give a little bit back and offer them a new, unique way of bringing their stories back to life – or giving them another one!
The Author’s Project
TinyTap’s Authors Project is a way for authors to digitize their books and sell them on iTunes and Android Market as apps.
This is an amazing opportunity for authors to get more exposure and most excitingly, reach kids around the world in a different, interactive way.
Below, some of the authors we’ve collaborated with:
Hazel Edwards: Reading Ambassador and Australian author of 200 books including There’s a Hippopotamus on Our Roof Eating Cake’ (Penguin)
.www.hazeledwards.com has recent titles, e-books and speaking events.
4 Reasons Why TinyTap’s New Jump Feature is So Awesome!
There is something that never ceases to surprise us here at TinyTap – people’s endless imagination.
Everyday we have the pleasure of seeing how creative one person can be when given a few simple tools – we find the pink tiara in a game created by a 3 year old girl, learn sign language thanks to a teacher that created a game for her students, we meet family members of people around the world and their favorite hobbies.
And this is why we can’t wait to see what people will create with TinyTap’s new Jump feature! TinyTap’s Jump feature allows users to jump between the pages of a game in any order they want – just imagine the possibilities.
Here’s 4 reasons why TinyTap’s new Jump feature is so awesome!
Adventure Games
Can you remember when you used to play with the same toy for hours when you were a kid? Now, as an adult, think about what made you so fixated in the first place.
I’ll tell you what…the story.
That toy wasn’t just a toy, it was a special car that traveled in time, a doll that was a princess trapped in a castle, a teddy bear that came from another planet to save us all!
The best toy a kid can have is imagination, and with the link feature, the sky’s the limit!
Kids can create fun adventure games with more than one ending, intertwine story plots, and learn richer storytelling!
Menus!
Instead of having long lists or an insane amount of pages for your game, you can now create menus!
This is a great way to explain topics more in detail in a quick and easy way by adding a new dimension to each element on the menu (e.g. when tapping on a specific object on a page, it can lead to a different page explaining more about it)
Family Tree
Teach your little ones about members of the family in a fun, engaging way!
Make it so that when they tap on Aunt Helen’s pic, they are taken to another page with funny photos of when Auntie used to play with dolls when she was a kid!
Or create an exciting page with awesome pics showing England in the 1940s that appears when they tap on grandpa!
Learning about family has never been so fun!
Interactive Trivia
Remember those cool ‘Did You Know?’ cards and Trivial Pursuit board games?! Now imagine them as interactive, voice activated, insanely fun games that could be played in a tap!
This is another very cool activity that you can do with the Jump feature – create interactive trivia games!
When you tap on the wrong answer to a question or lack knowledge of a quirky fact, you can be taken to a funny mistake page, or an info page with even more interesting facts related to what you tapped on. It’s a never-ending fountain of knowledge…with fun tapping activities games!
We’re sure you can come up with thousands of creative ways to use this cool feature…and we can’t wait to see them! Go Create!
TinyTap Joins Zynga Edtech Accelerator in SF!
So happy and proud to officially announce that TinyTap will be joining the second cohort of Co.Lab’s EdTech accelerator program in San Francisco! A big thank you to Zynga.org and NewSchools Venture Fund for this amazing opportunity!
We can’t wait to start working with some of the most innovative minds in the edtech and gaming world! San Francisco, here we come!
6 Creative Ways to Use TinyTap
Whether you’re a kid, parent, illustrator, or even just a passionate world traveler wanting to share your personal stories, the creative possibilities are endless on TinyTap.
Here are just a few of the many amazing things you can do with TinyTap!
Become a Math Pro
I don’t know about you, but Math class is one of our most dreaded memories from childhood. TinyTap can help turn tedious math lessons into fun games! Hundreds of kids are already using TinyTap to create kid-friendly math games and share them with our community. Need some ideas? Use the new shape puzzle feature to design a unique geometry based game or the “Deep Sea Math Creation Pack” to dive into addition and subtraction!
Take A Cooking Class
While cooking is an activity that usually needs adult supervision, kids can take the center stage on TinyTap! If you’re bored of the typical long list of steps then open up your TinyTap app and use it to create a fun recipe game with sound effects, personal photos, and even question and answers! You can even include personalized, age-relevant elements on food and kitchen safety. We love to see what our community has cooking!
Help Someone With Special Needs
No two persons with special needs are exactly alike and that is why we see the personalization facet of our app essential for educators and parents in designing their individual lessons for their pupils with special needs. One can simplify an original lesson like Liz Castagnera’s “Industrial Nation” activity or design a whole new tutorial tailored to meet individual challenges such as Ellen Weber’s “Understanding Gestures.” Whether it is used in an OT session or in an inclusion-based classroom, TinyTap is an ideal tool for those looking to target nuanced characteristics and learning styles of a specific child.
Learn a New Language
Want to learn numbers in Japanese, basic greetings in Arabic, or how to describe family members in Spanish? Explore TinyTap and you can find a myriad of user-generated language based creations in our market. Although these lessons won’t make you fluent, they are a wonderful way to enhance your basic language comprehension. Or use TinyTap to design and share your own language-based games!
Storytelling Time!
Got a great story to tell? Make it come alive with TinyTap’s beautiful design tools. Maybe you have a fantastic penguin romance story or your own prequel to Harry Potter, so let TinyTap inspire you to put your ideas onto “paper.” Tell us about your favorite fairytales or personal experiences, family traditions in Japan, what it’s like to be a big sister, your trip to South America, or even the challenges of having a puppy!
Make History Come Alive
Create comprehensive and fun lessons from scratch or simplify a series for a certain learning level. Teachers can design homework activities to test their students’ understanding of a particular topic or get them ready for a pop quiz! Encourage your students to create a history game and share them to inspire and educate others!
What other things are YOU doing with TinyTap? Share them with us at [email protected] so we can add them to the list!