Educational materials

Use of OneZoom in education

OneZoom has been used by students of all ages in classrooms, lecture theatres and home learning environments. We're looking for teachers and educators to help create learning materials and lesson plans that use OneZoom. If you're using OneZoom for teaching and learning and have some materials that you are willing to share with others, please let us know and we'll populate this page with downloads and links to these materials so that others can benefit from them.

With COVID-19 having recently closed many schools and universities across the globe, tools for home learning have never been more important. If you're a teacher or home educator with an idea of activities to do at home with OneZoom, please let us know and we'll post your suggestions here.

Please help

Join the growing community of teachers and educators using OneZoom in the classroom and lecture theatre to aid learning about biodiversity and evolution. We want to support you in this, so please ask if you have any questions.

Linnean Learning

The Linnean Society of London has produced a wonderful set of educational materials , including materials you can use at home which feature OneZoom.

Above: OneZoom launch event at the Linnean Society of London in April 2017

Downloadable materials

Our main educational product is our tree of life explorer. We have made some other educational materials as a way to motive exploration with questions that can be answered by using the tree of life explorer.

The maze of life puzzle is suitable for students age 16 and above. It will likely require them to use our tree of life explorer to find out how closely related different species are and thus solve the maze. The downloadable PDF is free to use and distribute under a CC-BY license. We do not provide straight answers online but if you're really stuck please write to us and we'll give you a clue.

There are over 2 million species of life on earth. One testament to this is the vernacular (common) names that have been chosen to represent some of them - there are just too many to give them all sensible names! Try our fill-in-the-blanks quiz of species names to see what we mean. It would be fun to guess the answers in teams, for example at a quiz night. If you're serious about getting the answers right you'll probably need to use the search bar on our website and the answers will be immediate.

Endorsements from educators

  • In my opinion, it is the best visualisation of evolution that's out there for the lay person.
    Michael Hanson, Vice Principal, Scotts Valley High School, California
  • Wonderful idea and resource!
    Ian Perry, teacher of biology at Hills Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge, UK (2017)
  • The OneZoom tree is a fantastic teaching tool for high schools. Students can use it as a resource for many activities in biology classes from evolution to classification. They love the zooming capabilities of the site and really enjoyed the links to Wikipedia pages for more information. I can almost hear the gasps of amazement when images become part of the tree. Thanks for a great tool.
    Lynn Wilhelm, US high school teacher
  • I read about OneZoom in Science Magazine - TERRIFIC PROJECT!! Thank you. This is something that middle-school and high-school science classes should see and use regularly.
    Frederick Lanni
  • I teach evolution and fractals, and thanks to @OneZoomTree this just got much cooler!
  • This is a beautiful and amazing resource.
    Anton Krukowski, Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco, CA
  • OneZoom - fractal explorer for the tree of life: 18,000+ views on #PLOSBiology Teaching Bio101 will never be the same
  • Whether I'm teaching A-level, undergraduates or Year 1s I always have OneZoom open in the background ready to show them how living things are connected. Every moment my students spend exploring OneZoom is time well spent and each of those moments expands to dozens of questions over the course of the next few months. This should be in every classroom.
    Tom McNally, Science Tutor
  • My intention is to make onezoom part of every biology lesson where possible.
  • I often use OneZoom in my class, the students love it.
    Dr. Jana Vamosi, Associate Professor, University of Calgary
  • Turned overwhelming "boring" text into the 'aha' moment when students can see the connections.
    Lori Tolley-Jordan, Jacksonville State University
  • I teach the evolution parts of a huge (>300 students) first year general biology module, and some of the students initially think of evolution only in linear, “March of Progress” terms. OneZoom is a great tool to correct that misapprehension!
    Dr. Louise Johnson, Associate Professor of Evolutionary Genetics
  • I've been using onezoom for 3 years now as a teaching tool.... Students are tasked to explore the Tree of Life using onezoom to determine the evolutionary relationship among taxa. They love it (and I do too!)!
    Sophie Plouviez, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
  • I am full of admiration for your article about communicating the Tree of Life. It is wonderful work you are doing.
    Mary Pickard Winsor, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, Canada