Your unit, their project
You do not have to teach computer science to use these apps. A history class can build a guided map tour of a journey. An English class can design a character and defend every choice with a quote. A science class can grow an island and then flood it. The subject is yours, and the app is how students show what they understood, in something they made instead of something they copied.
Why a project, and why one of these
History and social studies
Places, routes and data, which is most of what a map is for.
A guided tour of a journey
Lewis and Clark, the Silk Road, the Great Migration. One stop for each place, with the map flying there and a caption saying what happened and why it mattered, and the route drawn between the stops. The finished tour plays by itself.
Shows: Whether they know the order, the geography and the reasons, not just the dates.
Made in Map Story →A map that makes an argument
Students shade the countries by a number they looked up, such as literacy, life expectancy or access to clean water, then build three stops that explain the pattern.
Shows: Reading data, and backing a claim with it.
Made in Map Story →A building from the period
A pueblo, a Roman house, a longhouse, built from cubes. The slice view turns it into a floor plan for the presentation, so they can walk the class through the rooms.
Shows: What daily life looked like, down to where people slept.
Made in Voxel Art →English and language arts
Close reading, with a product at the end that has to agree with the text.
A character, defended with quotes
Build the book's main character from 500 parts. Every choice, hair, clothes, expression, the one odd accessory, needs a line from the text behind it. Anything they cannot defend gets changed.
Shows: Close reading. It is hard to fake a quote for a hat.
Made in Avatar Maker →The journey in the book
The Odyssey, Hatchet, Walk Two Moons. A stop for each place the story goes, with a short quote as the caption.
Shows: Setting, sequence and how place shapes the plot.
Made in Map Story →A typeface for the cover
Design the letters for the book's title so the font itself says something about the story, then write two sentences on why.
Shows: Tone and mood, argued in a new medium.
Made in FontMaker →Sound for a scene
Build the sounds for a passage read aloud: the storm, the alarm, the door that should not open. Then perform the reading with them.
Shows: Which details in the passage carry the mood.
Made in Sound Effect Studio →Science
Models that move, so a wrong idea shows up on the screen.
An animal built for a place
Design a creature for the water or for land and explain the job of each part. Then drop food in and watch whether it can actually catch it.
Shows: Adaptation, tested rather than asserted.
Made in Creature Lab →Flood the island
Grow an island, then raise the sea level. What goes under first, and why there? Temperature and moisture decide where forest, desert and snow go, so the second question writes itself.
Shows: Landforms, climate and cause and effect.
Made in Terrain Studio →Animate a process
The water cycle, the phases of the moon, a seed becoming a tree, animated with keyframes and a library of over 300 emoji. When a step is in the wrong order, the animation shows it.
Shows: Sequence and mechanism.
Made in MotionMaker →What is really in the drink
Build a drink, read its nutrition panel, and hunt down where the sugar is hiding. A good fit for health class.
Shows: Reading nutrition labels, and grams against a daily benchmark.
Made in Drink Lab →Math
Numbers students can see and hear.
Symmetry you can see
Draw one line and it repeats around the circle. Before changing the number of folds, students predict the angle between the copies, then check.
Shows: Rotational and reflection symmetry, and angles in a circle.
Made in Art Maker →Fractions you can hear
Build a beat where the hi-hat plays eighths and the kick plays quarters, then write the pattern down as fractions of a bar.
Shows: Parts of a whole, with the ear as the check.
Made in BeatMaker →Volume by the cube
Build an object in under 300 voxels, then use Measure Volume to count them and work out the surface.
Shows: Volume, surface area and 3D coordinates.
Made in Voxel Art →Art
Technique and design, without the cleanup.
A master study
A small study of one painting from the unit, painted in simulated wet paint that blends and smears like the real thing.
Shows: Brushwork, color mixing and looking closely.
Made in Fluid Paint →A self-portrait that blinks
A tiny pixel self-portrait, then a second frame where the eyes close.
Shows: Economy of detail, and how animation works.
Made in PixelArt →A sculpture from reference
Sculpt an animal or a head in digital clay from a photo, with symmetry mirroring every stroke.
Shows: Form, proportion and observation.
Made in SculptGL →Music
Same notes, different mood
Let the music box play in a major key, switch it to minor, and describe what changed.
Shows: Scales and mood.
Made in Chime Lab →The rhythm of a genre
Rebuild the drum pattern of a style from the unit, rock, hip hop or bossa nova, and explain which hits make it that style.
Shows: Meter, syncopation and listening.
Made in BeatMaker →Grading it
Grade the subject, not the software. Ask three things of every project: is the content accurate, is it explained, and can the student give a reason for each choice. The most polished project in the room is not always the one that understood the most, and the rubric should say so. Each app's own page lists five questions that show whether its ideas landed, if you want more.
Common questions
I am not a tech person. Can I run this?
Yes. Every app opens on something already made, with a one-minute guide, and students pick up the controls faster than any adult. Your job is the part you already know: the questions about the subject.
How long does a project take?
Most of the projects on this page fit in one or two class periods. A first look at any app takes a few minutes, so a quick try the day before is plenty of preparation.
Won't they just play?
For the first ten minutes, and that is how they learn the tool. A written brief with the questions the finished project has to answer keeps the rest of the time on the subject.
How do I grade it?
Grade the subject, not the polish. Three questions cover most projects: is the content accurate, is it explained, and can the student give a reason for each choice they made. A plain project that answers all three beats a beautiful one that answers none.
Do students need accounts?
Not to try anything on this page. To save their work, yes: a free class holds up to 50 students, you add them yourself with a username and password or give them a join code, and no email is needed. Work is private by default, and you can open any student's projects from your class page.
Will it run on our Chromebooks?
Yes. Everything runs in a browser tab with nothing to install. The 3D apps need a browser with 3D graphics, which almost every computer from the last several years has.
Start with a free class
Try one app yourself for five minutes, then set up a class and hand out the brief.