tizmos.com, since 2008
Tizmos started as a start page for teachers. One page with every link a class needed for the day, so a lesson didn't begin with ten minutes of typing web addresses into a projector. Teachers made a Tizmo, put it up on the board, and the kids clicked through. Later came pages for classes, folders, schools and districts, and a lesson planner.
It was, and is, made by Buttercloud, a small software studio. The name and the parrot are the same ones from the beginning.
Why anti-screen-time, in 2026
The job in 2008 was getting kids onto the right screen faster. That job is done. The screens are everywhere now, and the people who spend their days with children are the ones telling us the balance has tipped. We heard it from teachers, and we felt it at home.
So the new Tizmos is built around a screen that turns itself off. A teacher types one sentence. About twenty seconds later there is a Tizmo: a short story, the teacher's own hello, maybe one question, and then a mission. The screen goes dark, the student goes and does something real, and comes back to report. The teacher sees who went, how long they were off the screen, and what they found.
We think the most useful thing software can do for a child right now is to hand them back to the kitchen, the garden, the street, and the grown-ups around them, with a reason to go and a reason to come back.
AI will not replace teachers
Tizmos uses AI to do one narrow thing: turn a teacher's sentence into a draft mission fast enough that making one is not a chore. That is it. The voice on screen one is the teacher's. The idea is the teacher's. What the class does on Monday with what came back is the teacher's.
We are not building a tutor, a companion, or a feed. We are building the fastest way for a teacher to send a child outside with a purpose, and the simplest way to hear what happened.
What stays true
- Making, sending and remixing Tizmos is free for teachers. Forever, not as an introductory offer.
- Families always use Tizmos free.
- No kid accounts. Ever.
- Every Tizmo is listed in the community library and lives on the teacher's public page, because the best ideas in teaching have always travelled teacher to teacher.
Questions, ideas, or a story about what a mission turned into? Write to support@tizmos.com or use the contact page.
