For grown-ups

How to use it

• Pick a real painting: a busy park, a castle town, a beach, a rainy street, a market and more — open-access pictures from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Met, each with its source line.
• Pick a pin (⭕ I notice · ❓ I wonder · 💭 It reminds me of · ❤️ My favourite), then tap the picture where your child sees it. Drag a pin to move it; tap it to write what your child said (optional, on this device only, no names) or take it off.
• Keep it 💛 and it becomes a notebook page on Your shelf: the picture, the pins, and their words in the margin. Print my looking makes the same page on paper, with blank lines to write on.
• The four drawn pictures (the park, my room, the night sky, the reef) are still there, folded below: mark them square by square, and pick what each is about.

Why mark a picture

Before children read paragraphs, they read pictures. Choosing what to circle, point at, and wonder about is early observation and visual literacy — noticing detail and giving it a reason. We describe the rationale honestly and claim no measured outcome — MarkPals is a supportive tool, not an intervention.

Your own photos (on the app)

MarkPals here uses built-in pictures so it works on any school device with nothing to install and no camera needed. The iOS app additionally lets a child mark up their own photo — that camera feature is device-specific and lives only on the app.

No pressure, no counting

There is deliberately no score, no streak, and no "how many marked." The shelf just holds the pictures you looked at closely. Everything is on this device only, with nothing sent anywhere and no notifications.

← Mark a picture · About