Mini-apps — teacher guide

You type a few sentences about what you want, and seconds later, a complete, clickable exercise is ready for you. Students open it in their browser via a link, without needing to install anything. No coding skills required.

How it works

The workshop is located at /mini-apps, and you can also find it as a tile in the Teacher Portal. It is a teacher-only area — your students will never come here; they will only see the apps you share with them.

1. In the field under New Prompt, describe what the app should do, and click Generate. The more specific, the better: level, topic, number of tasks. Under Examples, there are six ready-made prompts you can click on to get started.
2. The app appears in the Preview, ready to be tested. Click through it just like a student would. The Code tab shows the HTML behind it, if you're curious.
3. If you want to make adjustments, write the change in the same field and click Update — "make the font larger", "switch to B1-level words", "add a reset button". The app is rewritten with each change.
4. Every version is saved. Under Versions, you can view an earlier version and click Restore if the latest change didn't turn out as expected.
5. Everything you create is saved in the Library under My mini-apps, complete with a search bar. From there, you can reopen an app, select Make a copy to create a variation for another level, or Delete it.

The Learn more button at the top of the page opens an explanation with more examples and tips.

Sharing an app with students

Click Share. This generates a Share Link, and sharing is activated immediately. You can paste the link into a group in Groups, in an email, or write it on the board. The Open student view button shows you exactly what the students will see.

Any student logged into Språki can open the link — meaning they must be logged in, but they don't need a code and don't need to be added anywhere first. The student page displays a thin Språki banner with the title and who shared the app, with the full-width app below it. If you want to disable access again, open Share and click Stop sharing. The link stops working immediately, and you can enable it again later.

Who it's for

Mini-apps work best as a short, focused activity during a lesson: a warm-up, a quick drill towards the end of class, a visual aid on screen, or a utility tool for yourself in the classroom. It works for all levels from A1 to B2, because you specify the vocabulary level in your prompt.

The apps do not store any data. They do not save answers, scores, or who completed what, and if a student refreshes the page, they start over. If you need to track individual student progress, that belongs in Practice, Write, or Groups.

Ideas for using mini-apps

1. Word of the week. "A memory game with 8 pairs: Norwegian words and picture emojis about kitchen and food, A1 level." Share the link on Monday and let students spend five minutes on it each day of the week.
2. Clickable grammar. "An interactive guide to strong verbs: click a verb to see its conjugation in all tenses." Show it on screen while explaining, and share the link afterward for review.
3. Exit ticket. "A 10-question quiz on prepositions of time and place. Show the answer key along the way and the total score at the end." Students take it in the final minutes of class and say their score out loud — you'll quickly see where the class stands.
4. Tools for yourself. "A name picker where I can paste student names, with a large 'draw' button", or a simple timer for station-based work. Nothing to do with language, but it saves time every lesson.
5. Workplace Norwegian in one place. "A hangman game with 15 A2 words related to jobs and working life." Make a copy and swap the words when you switch industries, giving you one app per class.
6. Let students make requests. Ask what they are struggling with and build the app while they watch. Seeing an exercise created from their own suggestions often sparks far greater interest in the activity itself.

Good to know

• The app runs in a secure sandbox. As stated on the page: "Mini-apps run in an isolated sandbox: no network access, no cookies, no storage. They can display and calculate, but cannot transmit any data." The app cannot access the student's Språki account, other websites, or anything on their device. Therefore, it is safe to share with the whole class, even if you haven't reviewed the code.
• Request one change at a time. Asking for five changes in a single prompt often results in four you didn't want. Take it one step at a time, and you'll see immediately if it hit the mark.
• Student time counts. The time a student spends on a shared mini-app is counted as learning time and appears as "Mini-app" under Progress.
• Plenty of room to experiment. You can create up to 30 mini-apps per day, and a prompt can be up to 4,000 characters long — plenty of space to describe the content, level, and design in detail.

See also

• Mini-apps — the workshop
• Teacher Portal — all teacher tools in one place
• For Teachers — getting started with Språki in the classroom