QuillQuestQuillQuest is spelling, times-tables, division and touch-typing practice for children aged about 8 to 14 (US grades 3–8). It is free, has no advertising, and requires no account of any kind.
Touch typing needs a physical keyboard, so it appears only in the browser version — on a Chromebook, a laptop, or a tablet with a keyboard case or trackpad. The iPhone, iPad and Android apps have spelling, times tables and division. If you are approving this for a class, approve the version your students will actually use: the browser build offers four subjects, the apps three.
The short answer for IT
| District rubric question | QuillQuest |
|---|---|
| Student accounts required? | No. There is no sign-up, no login, no password, no email. |
| Personal information collected? | None leaves the device. A first name and an age can be entered on the device to personalize the profile and pick a starting level; neither is ever transmitted, and neither is required. No email, phone or precise location is collected at all. As with any internet service, our servers see the requesting IP address, which we use only for rate-limiting and never store with a save. |
| Advertising or marketing? | None. No ad networks, no sponsored content, no upsells, no in-app purchases. |
| Analytics or tracking SDKs? | None. No cookies, no trackers, no behavioral analytics, no fingerprinting. |
| Data sold or shared? | Never. There is nothing to sell, and no third party receives student data. |
| Works offline? | In the apps, yes — the full game runs with no network, and extra voices and spoken example sentences download once from our content host and are then kept on the device. The browser version needs a connection: the page has to load, and it streams audio clips as it is playing rather than storing them. Plan for connectivity if your students will use the browser build. |
| What does the audio request reveal? | Each clip is stored under the word it speaks, so a request names that word. On phones and tablets the audio is fetched ahead of time over Wi-Fi, so by the time a student plays there is usually nothing left to request; the browser version streams clips as it needs them, so there the sequence of requests reflects the words being practiced. It never reveals whether an answer was right or wrong, carries no identifier for the student, and nothing is stored. We volunteer this because it is the one thing an otherwise "no data" answer would gloss over. |
| Syncing between devices | Optional, off by default, and switched on by a grown-up behind a parental gate. Only that learner's game progress and cartoon buddy travel, under an anonymous code — never a name, never an age. If school words are set up, that progress includes which spelling list and unit the learner is on; the lists are ability-grouped, so we name it rather than leaving it inside "progress". Leave it off and nothing leaves the device. |
| Age range | Roughly 8–14 (grades 3–8). A learner's age sets the starting level (touch typing always starts at the home row); harder levels are earned by mastering the one below. There is no diagnostic test. |
| Cost | Free. No paid tier, no trial, nothing to procure. |
What is stored, and where
On the child's device only: their progress (levels, stars, XP, streaks, which words they practiced, and — in Touch Typing — how often each keyboard key was hit right or wrong, never what was typed), an optional first name and cartoon avatar they choose, a chosen age used solely to pick a starting level, and their settings. On an iPad, iPhone or Android tablet this is stored by the app and is removed when the app is deleted. In the browser version it lives in that browser profile's own storage, and is cleared whenever browser data is cleared.
On our server — only if a grown-up switches syncing on: that learner's game progress, stored under a short anonymous sync code (ten characters, shown grouped like K7M2-QX9F-4K). No name, no age, no email, no password, no location. There is no account and no user record; we cannot tell whose progress a save is, and we have no way to contact anyone. The code itself is stored only as a one-way hash, so we cannot list codes, and a copy of our storage is not a ready-made list of codes. The save itself is stored unencrypted — we could read one if we chose to, and we don't; nothing in it identifies a child. Syncing is off by default and is never offered to the child.
Retention: device data stays until erased by the user. A synced save is deleted automatically after one year with no activity. Nothing else is retained, because nothing else is collected.
Compliance
- COPPA. QuillQuest asks children for no personal information: no name is required, no email, no login, no location. The optional syncing feature uses two random identifiers the app generates for itself — one for the install, one for the save — used solely to return that save to the same child's other device. That is support for the internal operations of the service under the COPPA Rule; it supports no advertising or profiling of any kind, and it is off unless a parent turns it on. Our privacy notice includes the data-retention policy required by the amended COPPA Rule in effect since 22 April 2026.
- SOPIPA and equivalent state laws. We do not use student data for targeted advertising, do not build student profiles for non-educational purposes, and do not sell student data. We hold no education records and receive no student roster data, so on our reading FERPA is not engaged — your counsel may wish to confirm that against your own deployment.
- CIPA. QuillQuest contains no user-generated content, no chat, no messaging, no external links reachable by a child, and no imagery beyond its own cartoon characters. There is no channel through which a child can encounter another user or outside content.
- Data processing agreements. We will sign the SDPC National Data Privacy Agreement (NDPA) if your district requires one. Please get in touch.
Content and safeguarding
Three automated checks run over the entire catalogue on every release. One proves that no profanity or blocklisted term appears anywhere in the app. The second tests every word, definition and sentence against 27 content rules — 7 of them blocking, which can never be waived and which fail the build outright, and 20 quality rules covering things like archaic senses, over-long definitions and awkward phrasing. The third reads every example sentence and judges whether it is right for a child of that age.
Anything the age check flags is reviewed by a person and either fixed or recorded, by exact sentence and by exact definition, in an acceptance list; reword either and the acceptance lapses and it comes back for review. That list currently holds 294 reviewed items. We publish the count rather than round it to zero.
Where the content comes from. Words are drawn from an everyday-English frequency list and graded by length, syllables and rarity. Definitions come from an open dictionary source and are checked for the primary, non-archaic sense. Example sentences come from that same dictionary where a safe one exists; where none does, we generate one and run it back through the identical safety gate, and anything that fails keeps a neutral spelling-bee cue ("Your word is X") instead.
We built it in those layers after finding that unfiltered dictionary examples — the ordinary kind, from a reputable source — produced sentences no child should be asked to read aloud. Every one of those is now gated out before it can reach a student.
There is no way for a child to enter free text that another person will see, because no such channel exists.
Using it in a classroom
Install the app from the App Store or Google Play. There is nothing to configure, no roster to build and no accounts to manage or later delete. Weekly spelling lists are optional — see below — and even those need no account and no setup on our side.
A browser version is now live, at quillquest.net/app. No install, no store approval, nothing to push to devices — it is the same game as the apps, in a tab.
Shared devices. Each learner can have their own player, switched from Settings, in the browser exactly as on a tablet. What that means in practice depends on how the device is set up:
- Students sign in to the device — the usual managed-Chromebook arrangement. Each sign-in gets its own browser profile, and progress is stored per profile, so every learner keeps their own automatically. Nothing to configure, and nothing for a teacher to remember.
- The browser profile itself is shared — a kiosk or generic class login, a shared iPad, a family computer. Here progress follows the profile, not the person. Each learner should switch to their own player in Settings before starting; a learner who doesn't will continue in whoever went last. QuillQuest asks: on any device with more than one player set up, opening the app shows a "who's playing?" picker before any progress is shown, so a learner who forgets to switch is asked rather than silently continued. Learners can still switch by hand in Settings at any time.
Nothing in either case leaves the device, and no learner can see another's answers — the muddle is progress and stars landing on the wrong name, not exposure of anyone's work.
Optional: weekly spelling lists
If you teach a weekly spelling list, QuillQuest ships two full 36-unit grade-5 years built on the same unit numbering, so a class can be split into two ability groups working the same week. Nothing about this needs an account, a roster, or any student data sent to us.
How it works. Open quillquest.net/app/teacher, pick the week and the unit your class is on, and you get a three-character code for each list along with that unit's 24 words. Post the code — or the link that carries it — in your usual assignment. A student opens it, sees the unit and all 24 words before anything is set, and — unless a grown-up needs to confirm a change, such as replacing a part-finished list or moving between the two groups — that week's practice starts straight away.
⚠️ The link opens the browser version, not the installed app. If a family already has QuillQuest from the App Store or Google Play, following the link sets the week up in the browser, which keeps its own separate progress — the app on the same device will not show it. For those families the code goes in the app instead: Settings → Parent dashboard → "I have a code from school". The three characters are the same either way, which is why the code matters more than the link. Handing out both — "open this link, or type ABC in the app" — covers every family in one line.
What the code is. Three characters naming a list and a week, and nothing else. It carries no word list (both years are already in the app), no student identity, and no class identity. Every single-character mistype is refused rather than loading a different week — we checked all 95,046 of them. Swapping two characters is caught most but not all of the time, which is exactly why a student is shown the unit and all 24 words to confirm before anything is set. The code travels in the part of a web address that browsers never send to a server, so opening a teacher's link tells us that someone loaded a page and nothing about which class they are in.
What you get back: nothing, by design. There is no dashboard, no report and no class progress view — we hold no education records to build one from. What a student's own screen shows, for you to read over their shoulder as you would an exercise book, is the unit, how many of the 24 words they have learned, and how many days they have practiced. The Friday paper test is still the report.
One thing to know. Codes are weekly: a code moves on one unit every calendar week, so after a break or a testing week, come back and hand out the code for the unit you are actually on.
Sound matters. Spelling practice requires hearing the word, so headphones are recommended. Times-tables works fine silently.
We do not offer Google, Clever or ClassLink sign-in, and that is deliberate: single sign-on would require us to hold student identities, which is precisely what this page says we do not do.
Contact
Questions from teachers, IT or district privacy officers: support@quillquest.net.