Our story
A start page in 2008. A dark screen in 2026.
The short, honest version of how tizmos.com went from getting kids onto the right screen to helping them put it down.
Where it started
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 grew up alongside the classrooms that used it. The name and the parrot are the same ones from the beginning.
Why anti-screen-time, in 2026
The job in 2008 is done. The screens are everywhere now.
In 2008 the useful thing was getting a class onto the right screen faster. It worked. But the people who spend their days with children are the ones telling us the balance has tipped — and we felt it at home too.
So the new Tizmos is built around a screen that turns itself off. A teacher types one sentence. About twenty seconds later there's a Tizmo: a short story, the teacher's own hello, maybe one question, then a mission. The screen goes dark, the student goes and does something real, and comes back to report.
We think the most useful thing software can do for a child right now is hand them back to the kitchen, the garden and the grown-ups around them — with a reason to go, and a reason to come back.
Our stance on AI
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 isn't a chore. That's 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're not building a tutor, a companion, or a feed. We're 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
Some things won't change, whatever we build.
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Free for teachers
Making, sending and remixing Tizmos is free, forever — not an introductory offer.
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Families always free
Families never pay, and never need an app or an account to open what you send.
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No kid accounts. Ever.
Students never sign up, sign in, or get a profile. The report comes back to you, not to a feed.
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Made with teachers
The best ideas in teaching travel teacher to teacher. Every Tizmo lives in the community library.
Who's behind Tizmos
A small team that has been doing this a long time.
Tizmos is founded by Feras Hirzalla and built by the team behind Buttercloud.
Buttercloud is a small software studio that has been quietly building and running tools people rely on for years — Tizmos among them since 2008. Long enough to have learned that the software that lasts is the quiet, reliable kind. The people who answer your email are the same people who build the thing.
Questions, ideas, or a story about what a mission turned into? Write to support@tizmos.com, or use the contact page.
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Buttercloud
The studio behind Tizmos — building software people keep since 2008.
Send your first mission home tonight.
Free, forever. One sentence in, a mission out.