While we are no longer developing Digital Mysteries and Thinking Kit, we are leaving our website up for those of you interested in the ideas behind the Apps.

Fresh for the new school year, Digital Mysteries has a new update which transforms how the library is used. The library is now completely customisable to your interests and needs. In the previous version of the program, when a user installed it, they also installed all mysteries currently available.

Now, apart from a handful of mysteries that come pre-installed, all the mysteries are web-based so you can easily download the ones you want for free.

This has a number of main benefits:

  • You get immediate access to any new mysteries as they get added to our library.
  • You get immediate access to any updated mysteries.
  • The application is faster to download and install.
  • You don’t need to have mysteries you don’t use or which are irrelevant to your work on your computer, yet they are still easily available should you need them in future.

Many of you may be thinking that a particular thing you liked was the fact you had access to all mysteries before, so what now? Well, the good news is that you still do! When you start up Digital Mysteries, the program connects to the internet and displays a list of available mysteries. As you can see below, we now have icons to represent the status of each:

                                                                                        school 1

We have tried to use icons to represent the status without too much explanation. The left column tells us the most about the mystery status. A cover image tells you it is saved on to your own computer, a downward arrow means downloading is in progress, and the world-wide-web symbol means it’s ready to download.The status at the bottom of the window leads in nicely to our plans for the future which is to encourage teachers and students to share their own with others. ‘Official mystery’ will just remind users that it is a mystery we have provided.We’re pleased this new version is ready for schools to use again now they’re back from holidays. If you haven’t tried Digital Mysteries yet, download a free trial now.