Next year, my dad is going to be the librarian at the elementary school I went to as a kid, and I'm trying to come up with some suggestions for sites/apps that'd be appropriate for K-5 and run on the school's Chromebooks/iPads for him.
Most of the stuff I did on the school library (flash games, 3D pinball space cadet, etc) or public library (Humongous Entertainment games, Cluefinders, Nancy Drew, etc.) computers isn't an option anymore, due to the death of flash and the move away from windows pcs. (Hey, at least they don't need to deal with the ball mice anymore either, haha)
I'm particularly stumped for iOS activities, but I'd greatly appreciate any ideas for web-based ones too!
Here's what I've come up with so far:
Scratch Web. Programming, games, visual art. A visual coding tool aimed at elementary school kids with no prior experience in coding, with mountains of stuff made primarily by other kids to draw inspiration from.
Twine Web. Programming, writing. Text-based game creation tool with a low barrier to entry for telling choose-your-own-adventure-style stories, with capabilities for making more involved interactive fiction.
Bitsy Web. Programming. A simple tool for simple games.
Piskel Web. Visual art. A pixel art animation tool.
Garageband iOS. Music. Honestly, I'm majorly drawing a blank for iOS apps, but GarageBand feels like an easy inclusion, assuming they have headphones available.
BeepBox Web. Music. A web-based music creation tool.
Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection iOS, web. Games. A collection of entirely free puzzle games. This is always one of the first apps I install on a new device, personally.
CoolMathGames Web. Games. Of the flash game sites the school library had whitelisted back when I was in school, this is the only one that has updated its catalog to account for the death of flash.
Crescent Loom Web. Game. Nervous system simulation game by @Wick. I imagine plenty of young kids could play this to some extent, though the web version seems to be a bit less stable than the desktop one.
Frotz iOS. Games. Text adventures are great fun, and Frotz is the best iOS IF interpreter I've tried, (plus, it's 100% free, with no ads) but I'd definitely need to approach it by recommending specific games. From a quick Google I found this article listing a middle school library's IF picks, but if anyone has specific recommendations, that'd be very cool.
sok-stories Web. Games. There are a couple things holding me back from recommending this. The web player lacks the tools for actually making sok-stories, for one, but more importantly, I have no idea how actively this is moderated. While I don't think I've run into one that I'd consider inappropriate in its subject matter, the fact that there's 3 search results for "fuck" makes me feel like that was just chance, haha.
PICO-8 Education Edition Web. Programming. For an older set of students, or students in a class actually focused on programming, this'd be super fun. <=5th grade, as a side activity, though? I don't think this is the right pick over Scratch/Twine/etc.
