A Note to Teachers Using the Classroom Tools

What the tools are for

Each tool is practice: vocabulary, a model to explore, a check on a skill before the quiz that counts. Every one runs in Safari on a school iPad with no login and no printing, and every one checks its own answers so a student knows right away whether the work is right. That self-check is the point, and it is also the limit. Use the tools to build fluency, and keep your graded assessments somewhere else.

Collecting the work in Canvas

The tools save a student’s progress on that iPad but send nothing to you. A screenshot uploaded to a Canvas assignment closes that gap, and it takes a ninth grader about a minute.

Set it up once for each tool:

1. Create a Canvas assignment and choose Online → File Uploads as the submission type.
2. Put the link to the tool in the assignment description, and state how many screenshots you expect. The biochemistry crosswords take three, one for each puzzle.
3. Grade complete or incomplete from the thumbnails. The tool’s check message appears in every image.

What students do:

1. Finish the activity and tap Check my letters until the message reads all correct.
2. Hold the iPad upright, then press the top button and a volume button together. The screenshot saves to Photos.
3. Open the Canvas assignment, tap Upload File → Photo Library, choose the screenshots, and submit.

Canvas attaches each upload to the student’s own account, so nobody needs to write a name on anything. Look at the check message before you mark it complete; a screenshot taken before checking, or with red letters still showing, is a student who stopped early.

Answer keys

No answer keys are posted, and none are needed. A page that checks answers carries those answers in its code, and any AI tool can solve a crossword in seconds, so a posted key would protect nothing. If you want a key, open the tool and work it yourself, or hand it to an AI and check what comes back. For the same reason, do not use these tools as a graded quiz. A student can find the answers as easily as you can.

If students share iPads

Every student works on a separate copy. Nothing typed on one iPad appears on any other, and there is no shared or class-wide version. Progress is saved in Safari on that one device, not in an account, which matters in only one situation: when the same iPad passes between students, as on a cart used by several classes. The next student then opens the activity with the last student’s answers still filled in. In that case, have students tap Clear after they upload their screenshot. Students with their own assigned iPads can ignore this. A private Safari tab saves nothing, so a student who works in one loses the work when the tab closes.

Using and adapting them

Everything is licensed CC BY-NC 4.0: free to use, adapt, and hand to a class, with credit, and not for resale. Each tool lists the Virginia Biology SOL and the Prince William County unit and learning targets it serves, so it can be dropped into a pacing calendar without guessing where it belongs.

What has changed

• September 16, 2026. First version, written alongside the first tool, the Unit 1 biochemistry vocabulary crosswords. Recommends the screenshot-and-upload method, posts no answer keys, and explains what to do when an iPad passes between students.