Shy Safari

What it is

Shy Safari is a classroom noise monitor that runs in a web browser. Put it on the projector or interactive whiteboard and it shows a calm savanna, coral reef, night sky in deep space or Cretaceous floodplain. It listens to how loud the room is through the computer's microphone, and while the class stays under the volume goal, shy animals come out one at a time. It is the opposite of a bouncing noise meter: there is no score, no needle and no red warning light, so nothing makes being loud more interesting than being quiet.

Using it in class

1. Open shysafari.com on the computer connected to your projector, pick the savanna, the coral reef, deep space or the prehistoric scene, and press Start. The browser asks to use the microphone.
2. Set the volume goal for the activity: Silent, Independent (quiet whispers) or Partner work (conversation voices), or drag the line on the meter to anywhere in between.
3. Let the class work. The first animal appears after 10 to 20 quiet seconds, and after that about one every five minutes of quiet work. Choose Relaxed, Normal or Lively in Settings, or type any number of minutes.

How it decides the room is too loud

Short noises, like a knock at the door or a dropped book, don't count. The room has to stay over the goal for a bit first: about six seconds if it's just over, or about one second if it's much louder. Once it quiets down, the scene clears within three seconds.

Calibration is optional. Five seconds of silence and five seconds of normal talking teach the app what your room and your microphone sound like.

What happens when it gets too loud

The scene clouds over, with a dusty haze on the savanna, murky water on the reef, interference in deep space and mist off the river in the prehistoric scene, and no new animals come out. What happens next is your choice:

• Animals run away (the default). The scene freezes and, while the room stays too loud, one animal and then a few more every five seconds run off the edge of the screen. In deep space, they fade out into static instead.
• Pause the scene. The animals hold still, nothing is taken away, and progress toward the next animal waits until the room is calm again.

The animals

The savanna has 17 animals, from meerkats and zebras to giraffes, hippos and rhinos, with lions, leopards and elephants as the rare ones. The coral reef has 18, from clownfish and seahorses to sea turtles and octopuses, with hammerhead sharks, manta rays and whale sharks as the rare ones. Deep space has 17 sightings for older students, from satellites, asteroids and astronauts to the space station, comets and Saturn-like planets, with a spiral galaxy, a black hole, a pulsar and a ring nebula as the rare ones. The prehistoric scene has 17 animals from the very end of the age of dinosaurs, drawn with up-to-date science, from small mammals, lizards and feathered raptors to Triceratops and Ankylosaurus, with Tyrannosaurus, Quetzalcoatlus and the giant Alamosaurus as the rare ones. Common animals turn up often and rare ones are a real event that many sessions will not see at all. Each scene keeps its own animals, and the collection remembers every animal the class has spotted.

Who it is for

Teachers of any grade who want a calm, visual cue for voice levels during independent work, reading time, tests, centers or group work. The whole class shares one screen, and students need nothing at all.

Questions teachers ask

Is Shy Safari free?

Yes. There are no paywalls, no ads and no premium version. It came out of the EdTech-a-thon, a community of builders making free tools for classrooms, and is maintained by teacher.dev.

Does it record the classroom?

No. The microphone is used only to measure how loud the room is, as a single number, moment by moment, on your computer. Nothing is recorded, saved or sent anywhere.

Do I or my students need an account?

No. There is no sign-up, no login and nothing to install. Settings are saved in the browser on that computer.

What do I need to run it?

A computer with a microphone and an up-to-date web browser such as Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari. Laptops, Chromebooks and interactive whiteboards all work. It is designed for a projector or large screen, but it runs on a tablet or phone too.

Which languages does it support?

English, Spanish and French. It follows the browser's language, and you can change it from the menu at the top of the screen.

How is it different from a noise meter?

A noise meter shows the class how loud they are, which can turn getting louder into a game. Shy Safari shows only a peaceful scene that slowly fills with animals, so the reward for quiet work is what the class sees, and there is no score to beat.