11 Aug
New Course: Culturally Responsive Science Teaching
As educators, we want what is best for our students. Our new self-paced course, Culturally Responsive Science Teaching, is now live. We are excited to help educators learn how to incorporate these practices through the lens of STEM and Tyto Online. This course was developed by Dr. Holly Pope with Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching
04 Aug
Scalability + Performance Updates
Automatic Scaling With our increasing number of users, we have decided to utilize GameLift (a service provided by Amazon Web Services) to easily launch, update, and scale game servers so that we can scale to massive numbers of user supports. Improved Frame Rate with Occlusion We are trying a lot of things to improve frame
01 Jul
New Student Dashboard + Other Improvements!
This update is starting at 7 PM ET, so expect to see the changes Saturday, July 2nd, and onward! Student Dashboard + Loading Improvements The student dashboard has been totally revamped with access to resources, and most importantly: should save 1-2 minutes of load time to get students into learning activities faster! 🙌 To get
01 Feb
Black History Month & Contest!
This February, we wanted to do something big to celebrate Black History Month. We decided to create a new Black History exhibit at the Mai Art Museum (in the Marketplace section of the Student District)! The art museum has been fully re-decorated with 50 art installations, each honoring a history-making Black figure from around the
15 Jan
2021 Year in Review!
Our 2021 “Year in Review” is up! A few key highlights: We reached 4.3x more students than the year prior Launched our HTML5 browser version Added new critical team members Received grants and fundraising so we’re ready to grow even more in 2022!
04 Dec
Winter 2021 Update
Updated Cells Introduction Storyline We have updated our old ‘Outbreak’ storyline (now called ‘The Outbreak’) to be more interactive and to provide more in-depth learning. The old storyline will be left up for another week in case you have already started it but haven’t finished. Celebrating Diversity We have added hijabs to the game as
10 Nov
Example Tyto Online Storyline Implementation
We wanted to share a unified example of what it looks like to implement a Tyto Online Storyline within the classroom. We pride ourselves in the fact that Tyto Online is versatile enough to be useful in many different types of classroom settings (including remote, semi-remote, and homeschool!) but we also have our own ideas for
19 Sep
Tyto Online selected as a Solver Team for Equitable Classrooms Challenge during MIT Solve Challenge Finals 2021
We are thrilled to announce that Tyto Online has been selected as a Solver Team via the MIT Solve’s Global Challenges competition. Each year, MIT Solve launches a number of Global Challenges to tackle some of the most pressing challenges around the year. This year, one of those focuses was on Equitable Classrooms, asking innovators
17 Sep
Fall 2021 Update: Faster Load Speeds + Many Interface Improvements!
Much faster Browser Load Speeds! We have worked hard on optimizing the loading speed, and we’re now seeing around 50% faster initial load speeds. So for example, on a Chromebook (Lenovo N23) that is four years old, we went from a 5-5.5 minute loading time to 2.5-3 minutes! We’ve also improved how Tyto Online handles
09 Jul
How Tyto Online Supports Girls in STEM
There’s a big problem in STEM, and it impacts half of the population. That problem is a lack of representation for and from women and girls in STEM fields. Women have long been under-represented in STEM-related career fields, and this lack of representation has a wide range of negative consequences. Because science has been a
