Bill Nye the Science Guy

Bill Nye the Science Guy is an exploratory app that allows users to investigate Bill Nye’s desk. On his desk are different objects that users can explore to learn about space travel, archeology, and simple experiments, among other topics. When users tap an object, they are presented with a text, game, video, or activity related to the object and its corresponding topic. As users engage the topic, voice-overs from Bill Nye are included, providing users with an interactive feel to learning.

Instructional Ideas

1. Teachers can select an experiment from “The Book of Do-It-Yourself Experiments” located on Bill Nye’s desk and create a lab about the chosen experiment for students to conduct in class. Following, teachers can instruct students to compose a lab report that states what they did during the experiment and what they learned.
2. Students can select the television from Bill Nye’s desk and watch a video. Next, teachers can instruct students to respond to the report by summarizing its key points in writing or by creating a presentation using another app, such as Haiku Deck, CloudOn, or Prezi.
3. Students can engage the “Whorl of Illusion” adventure from Bill Nye’s desk. As students engage the adventure, they will encounter different optical illusions. After students experience the different illusions, teachers can instruct students to conduct independent research to explain them. Students can then present illusions to the class, and explain why and how human brains process optical illusions.

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