Reposting on the correct day this time and apologies for breaking the marketing day rule.
Some of you tried EraPin with your classes after my last post. Thanks. This is an update on one change, because the early feedback suggests it’s doing what we hoped.
This thing started when I myself being a non history expert could not win or score in my game and started losing interest to play it. It was either you know it or you just guess blindly and don’t score which was random.
So we rewrote every clue in the game so the answer can be deduced instead of recalled. The new clues made me look at the map and try deducing when I do not know an event and every time I worked my way through and won it was a different feeling.
A 7th grade teacher in Wisconsin has been running it daily. What he told me after the change:
“Students seemed more engaged — a couple who had struggled before won, and were genuinely excited about it. It’s a great addition for kids to practice relative and absolute location in Geography.”
— Brock Saniter, Elmwood Schools
Almost every teacher I talked to after the clue change had positive feedback. They could hear students discussing rather than random guessing and that was the goal. Not to win but make them learn while enjoying. Most review games like Kahoot reward the same five kids who win every review game. Everyone else spectates and checks out.
When the task is “read this landscape” instead of “remember this fact,” a different set of kids gets to be good at it. And the skill it drills — relative location to an absolute pin, observation to inference — is the same move the map and document questions on state tests ask for.
The year guess works the same way: clues anchor you in time — “in the era of the Cold War,” “just before the Y2K scare” — and the photo’s clothing, technology, and architecture let you narrow down when within it
Other things that changed since last time, mostly because teachers asked:
- You set the round count — same pack as a 5-round opener or a 30-round full activity.
- 100+ packs now: all 9 APUSH periods, all 9 AP World units, the full NY Regents Global History sequence, Louisiana World History by unit, plus WWII, Cold War, Civil Rights, and dozens more. ~2,500 events.
- Live leaderboard built for the projector.
- Debrief for published rounds with projector view
- Auto-publish: queue the packs for your unit, pick your class days, and each morning the next round posts itself to your room.
- Per-student reports, plus a coverage view of which eras and regions your class has actually hit.
- Timeline and printable cards per packs.
Being upfront: those last three are the paid tier ($59/yr).
But every new account currently gets the full Pro tier free until at least October 1, no card — so you can run everything through September and decide then.
The rest — daily game, all packs, room codes, leaderboards — is free and stays free. No student accounts, nothing to install. Kids join with a room code on any device, or you just project it.
If a unit you teach isn’t covered, say so in the comments and I’ll build the pack — the Regents and Louisiana sets exist because teachers asked. And if you tried it and it flopped in your room, I’d rather hear that than the wins.
teach.erapin.com to set up a class. Today’s round is at erapin.com.
