Selecting the Best Apps for Teaching and Learning

Elizabeth R. Cournoyer February 22, 2023

163 4 minutes read

A simple yet powerful tool for figuring out which apps paintings high-quality in your schoolroom, in your subjects, and your students closing week, I had the privilege of supplying a keynote deal with at a local schooling technology convention in North Carolina centered on teaching and gaining knowledge of with the iPad. This day amassing was coordinated using Franklin Academy predominant David Mahaley and Assistant Administrator and instructor Tim corridor. Over 120 educators came to study, percentage, and talk methods in which the iPad may be used efficaciously inside the teaching and studying manner.

A student exhibit becomes additionally supplied, and it becomes very informative and exciting (the one’s Franklin Academy students are an outstanding bunch). With any luck, this event, now in its 2d year, will hold for future years. One of the maximum treasured periods I attended included methodologies for determining which app’s factors make it most useful inside the schoolroom. This consultation, presented by way of David Mahaley, addressed the question, “How can teachers maximize the effectiveness of apps used inside the getting to know environment?” We learned how to evaluate, check, and determine apps for the iPad and their capacity for the academic setting.

Summary show

iPad App evaluation rubric for instructors teaching lecture room

We’ve all experienced the initial pleasure that can include a new generation like the iPad. It’s no longer difficult to find apps that we assume might be useful inside the schoolroom (take a look at this latest post for more on that). Still, we regularly locate in realistic use that many of them are too unmarried-cause or produce other boundaries that lead them too much less beneficial than we might have firstly predicted. How can we evaluate apps regularly, trustworthy manner so that we spend our money and time (for paid apps) accurately?

Use a Rubric!

one of David’s cited sources is Kathy Schrock’s “iPads inside the lecture room” web page, which contains hyperlinks to a wealth of statistics related to teaching with the iPad, in numerous sections. If you scroll down the web page for a piece, you’ll discover a segment titled “iPad App evaluation guides”. right here, you may find numerous rubrics that may be extremely beneficial in figuring out whether an app can be awesome on your school room permits’s take a look at this type of mainly – the assessment Rubric for iPod/iPad Apps:

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Curriculum Connection
Authenticity
remarks
Differentiation
consumer Friendliness
scholar Motivation
Reporting

A short read thru the standards for the highest weighted ranking for every one of the domains helps to clarify what everyone is addressing. as an example, to score a four for Differentiation, the app ought to “provide complete flexibility to modify settings to meet student wishes.” to attain a 4 for remarks, the app needs to offer feedback that “is particular and outcomes in improved pupil performance.”

An example permits the investigation of the app times desk Quiz (from Koalapps) using this rubric. We’ll assume we’re using this in a primary grade degree where the multiplication tables up to 12 x 12 must be found out. Tables Quiz is a simple, unfastened app that offers random multiplication questions and four more than one choice answers. Questions will keep coming until you get one incorrect, but many the pupil gets accurate is their score. If you get an answer wrong, it indicates you the proper answer, and that game run is over. My ranking for the times’ desk Quiz app for every of this rubric’s domain names is as follows:

Curriculum Connection:

4 (“talents reinforced are strongly connected to targeted skill of concept”)

Authenticity:

4 (“focused capabilities are practiced in an authentic layout/ trouble-primarily based mastering environment”)

remarks:

2 (“comments is restricted to the correctness of scholar responses and may allow college students to attempt once more”)

Differentiation:

1 (“App offers no flexibility to modify settings to meet scholar needs (settings can not be altered)”)
consumer Friendliness: four (“college students can launch and navigate in the app independently”)
scholar Motivation: 3 (“students use the app as directed by using the instructor” – this is an imagined rating, as I’ve not had multiple students really use it and provide feedback)

Reporting:

1 (the most effective feedback is the pupil’s score, which best they see, so I thought this became the exceptional suit to the ranking standards offered) overall rating for instances Tables Quiz: 19 (now not bad for a free app). If we desire to improve in this app, we know how to cognizance our seek – look for an app this is more potent in decreasing ranked areas. If we ought to discover an app that ranks well in all the different regions but improves on comments, Differentiation, and/or Reporting, it needs to be a higher suit. Perhaps an app that we could use to select unique instances tables to drill gives hints on how to work inside distinctive multiplication sets (like ‘the digits in multiples of nine uploads as much as 9’, that type of thing) or affords summarized performance feedback from the trainer.

Wrap Up

this is an awesome device for inspecting one-of-a-kind software program packages for pupil use in preferred, now not just for the iPad – but for any tablet or different computing tool. This logical, methodical method can allow an instructor or a collection of teachers to carry an informed attitude to deciding on apps for student use. by way of having some teachers use one-of-a-kind apps and then use this rubric to evaluate their applicability and rank them, colleges can convey efficiency and uniformity to app selection and teaching.

Kathy Schrock’s “iPads in the schoolroom” internet web page also incorporates links to many tutorials, lists of apps & associated substances, a segment “mainly for unique training”, and plenty lots extra. It’s miles worth spending some time with this useful resource website if you are an educator using the iPad inside the schoolroom.