📚 The Learn Library

Everything in Wiz Kids traces back to research — this library is where we show our working. Every article cites its sources, grades the strength of the evidence, and says plainly when the literature is thin. Written for teachers, useful to anyone.

🧠 The Science of Learning

The research behind how children actually learn — spacing, retrieval, mastery, motivation — and the myths that refuse to die.

• Cognitive load theory: designing for the bottleneck
• Deliberate practice: why hours alone don't make experts
• Desirable difficulties: why learning that feels harder often works better
• Feedback: the highest-leverage move in teaching, and the easiest to fumble
• The forgetting curve: what Ebbinghaus actually found, and what to do about it
• Growth mindset, honestly: what survived the big replications
• The science of learning: a working map for teachers
• Interleaving: why mixed practice beats blocked practice
• Mastery learning and Bloom's two-sigma problem
• Metacognition: teaching children to run their own learning
• Motivation: what self-determination theory tells classrooms
• Multimedia learning: how words and pictures combine (and collide)
• The 10,000-hour myth: what the rule gets wrong about practice
• The goldfish myth: no, attention spans haven't collapsed to eight seconds
• The digital native myth: growing up with screens doesn't teach computer skills
• The learning styles myth: what the evidence actually shows
• The left-brain/right-brain myth: hemispheres don't make personalities
• The multitasking myth: switching isn't doing two things at once
• The overjustification effect: when rewards backfire
• Retrieval practice: testing as a learning event, not a measuring one
• Spaced repetition: the most reliable finding in learning science
• Transfer of learning: the hardest problem in education, stated honestly
• Worked examples: why novices learn more from studying solutions than solving

⌨️ Teaching Digital Skills

What the evidence says about teaching typing, files, search, spreadsheets, coding and more — at what age, in what order.

• AI and homework integrity: the primary-school version of the problem
• AI literacy for primary ages: helper, not oracle
• Blocks to text: what the transition research actually shows
• The command line for children: why the oldest interface still teaches best
• Computational thinking in primary school: what it is and how it develops
• Debugging as pedagogy: the bug is the lesson
• Email as a genre: teaching the letter's strange successor
• Ergonomics for children at computers: what matters and what's folklore
• Teaching children to evaluate sources: after the checklist era
• Screens and children's eyes: myopia, strain, and what 20-20-20 actually is
• The filesystem mental model: teaching where things actually live
• File naming: the smallest skill with the longest payoff
• The home row method: why touch typing starts from ASDF JKL;
• Hunt-and-peck fossilization: why typing habits set early and cost forever
• Teaching digital skills: the evidence map
• Keyboard shortcuts: the evidence for teaching the fast way
• Lateral reading and SIFT: teaching children to evaluate online information
• The constructs ladder: sequencing loops, conditionals and functions
• AI-text detectors don't work: the evidence schools need
• Children and misinformation: what the research actually covers
• Prebunking: inoculation theory in the classroom
• Presentation literacy: teaching children that slides are not the speech
• Query formulation: teaching children to ask machines good questions
• Screenshots are not evidence: teaching provenance
• Search vs folders: what the retrieval research says about finding your stuff
• Sponsored results and lookalike URLs: reading the road signs
• Spreadsheet thinking: the most underrated numeracy vehicle in primary school
• Accuracy first: the one typing-instruction principle worth being strict about
• When should children start typing? The age-readiness question
• Typing speed benchmarks by age: realistic expectations for children
• Word processing: a progression that follows the writing research

🛡️ Online Safety & Digital Citizenship

Passwords, sessions, cookies, scams, group chats and screen time — the honest evidence, written for classrooms.

• Age verification: the landscape, honestly mapped
• The bystander effect online: why witnesses matter more than bullies
• Consent dark patterns: the tricks between users and 'no'
• Consent fatigue: when asking becomes a weapon
• Cookies explained: the memory notes worth teaching accurately
• Cyberbullying: what the research actually shows
• Digital permanence: teaching 'carved in stone' without teaching terror
• The displacement hypothesis: what screens actually crowd out
• Gaming and children: the evidence without the panic or the hype
• Group chats before the first phone: what children need to know
• Online safety & digital citizenship: the honest evidence map
• Online grooming: warning signs adults should know
• Parental controls: what the evidence says about monitoring vs mentoring
• Passwords for children: what to teach before the first real account
• Teaching children to spot phishing and scams: what actually works
• Reporting mechanisms: the map, and why children don't use it
• Scams that target children: a working typology
• Screen time: an honest review of the evidence
• Sessions and shared computers: the door nobody teaches children to close
• Talking with children about online life: what the research says works

🏫 Classroom Implementation

Timetables, differentiation, accessibility, assessment, equity — and mappings to national curricula and standards.

• The absolute beginner and the 'expert': the same classroom's two hard cases
• The accessibility checklist: evaluating digital-skills tools for every learner
• Assessing digital skills: performance tasks beat quizzes
• The Australian Curriculum: Digital Technologies (F–6), unpacked for primary teachers
• Chromebook classrooms: teaching real skills on the fleet you actually have
• Classroom posters: the wall versions of the ideas that work
• The CSTA K-12 standards (1A & 1B), mapped for elementary classrooms
• Differentiating digital skills: the widest spread in the timetable
• The England computing curriculum (KS1 & KS2): what it requires and how to cover it
• The home access gap: what it is, what it does, what schools can do
• Digital homework and equity: the policy the access data demands
• Classroom implementation: the practical pillar
• Ireland: primary digital learning in a curriculum in transition
• The ISTE Standards for Students, mapped for primary classrooms
• Computer lab or classroom devices? The trade-offs, honestly
• Motor accommodations for digital skills: DCD, dyspraxia, and the settings nobody teaches
• New Zealand's Digital Technologies curriculum, mapped for primary
• One hour a week: making a real digital-skills program fit a real timetable
• Performance tasks vs multiple choice: what each can actually certify
• Placement diagnostics: meeting every child where they actually are
• Rotation models: teaching digital skills with six computers
• Scheme of work: your first year of Wiz Kids, term by term
• Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence: Technologies, mapped for primary
• Typing and dyslexia: why keyboards matter more for the children they're hardest for
• Shared-device hygiene: the habits that make classroom fleets safe
• Year 3 computing: the foundations year
• Year 4 computing: the consolidation year
• Year 5 computing: the application year
• Year 6 computing: the capstone year

🎲 Game-Based Learning, Honestly

What gamification evidence actually supports, where it harms, and where the dark-pattern line sits.

• Cooperative vs competitive mechanics: what the evidence weighs
• The dark-pattern line: engagement mechanics that serve the child vs the metrics
• Earned currencies: token economies, done right and done wrong
• Flow in learning games: the useful idea and its oversold version
• Does gamification work? The evidence, mechanic by mechanic
• Game-based learning, honestly: the evidence map
• Preserving intrinsic motivation: gamifying without crowding out
• Loot boxes and children: the evidence that moved regulators
• Narrative in learning: what story actually does for children
• Par and efficiency scoring: grading the solution, not the child
• Points and badges: what the research actually found
• Stars and mastery signals: making progress legible without lying
• Streaks and habit formation: the mechanic on the line

🔒 EdTech Privacy & Procurement

COPPA, GDPR-K, reading privacy policies, and what zero-personal-data architecture makes impossible.

• Student privacy in Australian schools: the Privacy Act, ST4S, and the incoming Children's Code
• COPPA for schools: what it actually requires, in plain language
• Data minimisation: the principle that does the most work
• Deletion in practice: what 'we deleted it' actually means
• Edtech breach case studies: what actually happened, and what each one teaches
• FERPA basics: the US school-records law, briefly
• GDPR and children (GDPR-K): what European rules mean for school edtech
• The hashed-emails myth: why hashing an identifier doesn't anonymize it
• EdTech privacy & procurement: the pillar guide
• Edtech procurement for school leaders: a defensible process
• Pseudonymous identity: the middle ground, mapped precisely
• How to read an edtech privacy policy: a teacher's checklist
• Student data rights: what families can actually demand
• Third-party trackers in edtech: what the audits found
• The UK Children's Code: the design code the world is copying
• The vendor questions: what to ask an edtech company directly
• Victorian schools and student privacy: the IPPs, OVIC, and the software gate
• Zero-PII architecture: how identity without personal data works

📚 Research Digests & Reference

Evidence gradings, annotated bibliographies, glossary, and benchmarks — the shelf the other pillars stand on.

• Bibliography: the digital-skills evidence base
• Bibliography: the learning science this library stands on
• Bibliography: the online-safety and wellbeing evidence base
• Effect sizes for teachers: what d actually means
• How we grade evidence (and why every article carries a grade)
• Glossary: the terms this library uses
• Reading education research critically: a teacher's field guide
• Typing speed norms: what the data actually supports

📐 Design Memos

Why Wiz Kids works the way it does — each decision traced back to the research that forced it.

• Design memo: why we sign children out after 45 idle minutes
• Design memo: why our consent gates are playable
• Design memo: why everything is wizards
• Design memo: why our streaks forgive
• Design memo: why the demo is free, full, and login-less
• Design memo: why Wiz Kids requires a real keyboard
• Design memo: why there are no leaderboards
• Design memo: why tasks have par instead of timers
• Design memo: why students sign in with picture sequences
• Design memo: why our reviews never show their own answers
• Design memo: why we simulate apps instead of using real ones
• Design memo: why Wiz Kids collects no personal data at all

© Glu IO Pty. Ltd. — Wiz Kids (wiz.kids). Link freely; republication requires permission — see terms. Found an error in our reading of the research? We correct fast: tell any teacher piloting Wiz Kids.