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Insights Into Evaluating Mobile Education Apps

By | Sep 21, 2010

By Don Douglass
In the exploding world of apps few areas are growing faster than educational applications for young children. Sounds like great news for parents, right? Well, not exactly. While there are thousands of great looking choices many have little or no educational value.

How can a parent decide what’s good? Here are six basic questions that will help you evaluate the educational quality of apps for your preschool kids.

Is the app entertaining?
This is consideration number one. If children are not entertained they quickly lose interest. The learning content can be excellent but your kids will learn very little if they don’t play the game.

Does the app include rewards and positive reinforcement?
What happens when you child answers a question or performs a task correctly? Does a star appear and a voice say, “Good job!” Verbal and/or visual rewards are important motivators. They also clearly tell the child whether their response is correct or incorrect. Simply moving to the next task with no feedback leaves the child in doubt as to whether or not he is doing the task correctly.

How good are the opening instructions?
Remember, most preschoolers cannot read. It is fine to have written instructions (for parents benefit) but kids need to hear them. Instructions must be short and not too complex. Wording should be simple. Long, complex instructions with high school vocabulary will turn kids off before the first task appears on the screen.

Some apps have no opening instructions and launch right into the activity. Rarely does this approach work well even for very simple activities. You at least need to know how to move to the next activity or how to start the game over.

How long is the game?
Preschoolers have short attention spans. Even very entertaining app games will probably not keep a child focused for dozens of separate tasks. Look for sections of eight to ten activities. Colorful and highly entertaining app with lots of rewards will probably keep a preschooler focused that long. Then it is time to move on to a different activity.

One exception to this guideline would be apps in story book format. An engaging story or fairytale, especially if it contains creative animation and music, can keep a young child on task longer than the traditional sequential activities of most apps.

Is the game age appropriate for your child?
Hundreds of books have been written trying to define exactly what “age appropriate” means. For our purposes let’s rely on your experience as the parent of your child. Apps that teach number or letter recognition are great for 2 and 3 year olds. The same child is not ready for math problems with multiplication and division. This is what we mean by age appropriate. Take a look at the tasks involved. Are they things your child is capable of learning right now? Look at the vocabulary. Does your child recognize the words used for instructions and the game activities?

Don’t forget to assess the difficulty of the app format itself. A two year old can easily tap a picture on the screen. They will have difficulty dragging a number or object across the screen, especially if the object is very small.

Is this a real app or a glorified flash card?
An educational app should be more than just a flash card. Kids are quickly turned off to this kind of rote drill activity. If an app is little more than electronic flash cards don’t buy it.

Certainly there is much more involved in a complete review of an educational app for children. However, these six questions will help you make better choices in your search for great educational apps.

About the Author

Don Douglass spent thirty years as a professional educator.  He has been a high school English teacher, a principal at both the high school and middle schools levels and has coordinated elementary Title I reading and math projects.  He has also served as a adjunct professor teaching graduate level education courses.  Don’s formal education includes an undergraduate degree in English and graduate degrees in English education and educational administration. For the past eleven years Don has worked as consultant, served as executive director for an industrial trade association, and started his own business specializing in marketing and communications. 

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10 Comments so far
  1. Jon Prial September 21, 2010 3:20 pm

    Great insights! We are already seeing that small children have an excellent proficiency with these devices (swiping to turn pages, tapping to expect an action) and that some of the “basic” instruction needs will be reduced.

  2. Traci Lawson September 21, 2010 6:52 pm

    This is a great list! I would add to your suggestion that instructions should be short, to say that they should be very instructive of what to do right now. Don’t say “We’re going to build a house with cards! Touch the deck of cards from over there, and bring them to the table over here. See how high you can get before it falls down!” Instead, just say “Drag the red card to the table!” Even better if you can visually highlight the target area with a colored flash. Then, if you need more instructions, feed them just as they are needed.

    Also include a way to turn the instructions off, so the game isn’t talking at me when I already know how to play.

  3. Aspergers Syndromes Symptoms September 21, 2010 9:04 pm

    Terrific work! This is the type of information that should be shared around the web. Shame on the search engines for not positioning this post higher!

  4. digitalchristopherrobin September 28, 2010 5:01 pm

    This is great insight for both parents and developers.

    As a developer, it is challenging to build an experience that is tailored to the youngest learners, simply because there is so much variation across kids, even of the same age group. When we simplify things, we receive feedback that we are “insulting the intelligence of kids” – yet when we make things a little more complicated we get feedback that it’s too much. And this is the case even when we are targeting a very tightly defined age group and doing extensive user testing.

    So thanks for this post — it’s a great checklist to run any app through, whether you’re buying it or building it. Especially love that first point — if kids aren’t engaged, then they aren’t learning.

  5. gary james January 24, 2011 4:23 pm

    Hello,
    We would like to feature your company, logo and website link on our new Apps for Children With Special Needs site.
    You can view the site at http://www.a4cwsn.com
    We provide parents with videos of interesting Apps for them to view.
    We only launched this site about a week ago and have over 3000 people already interested in the concept.

    If this sounds of interest to you, please send us your company logo, no bigger than 500 wide by 250 high and the link to your site.

    If you have any codes, that always helps as we can’t buy every single App out there.

    We will do our best to video and feature your App within 1 week if it is appropriate for our audience,( families with Kids)

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  6. Wayne Allen Bateman July 1, 2011 12:48 pm

    Please permit me to introduce you to a new children’s educational game for the iPad and iPhone:
    http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/counting-beads/id441820190?mt=8&ls=1#

    Counting Beads is a totally fun way for children to learn numbers and letters of the alphabet. The numbers (or letters) appear as colored beads that you connect by dragging each bead into its next higher numbered bead. As you connect the beads in numbered order, you create a chain that follows the lead bead as you drag. This teaches the numbers visually. You can also move the bead chain by holding the device face-up parallel to the floor and tilting it slightly to let gravity roll the leading bead downhill. Even older folks can have fun with this amusing simple game.

    A brief demo video of this app is available on UTube:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GwIbIZOQu0

  7. cardaddy July 14, 2011 2:57 am

    Thanks for this info and for your blog on the whole. I’ve just subscribed to it.

  8. WeAreFacesKids July 14, 2011 9:00 am

    “The wolf and the seven goats” – a new interactive kids application for iPad / iPhone and iPod.
    This is the interactive version of the classic fairy tale The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats by the Brothers Grimm in English and Russian for kids of all ages.

    Read, watch, and listen to the famous Fairy Tale on your iPad or iPhone.

    Features:

    - Kid-friendly and colorful interface
    - Animations and sounds on every page
    - Brings characters to life by tapping them
    - High quality illustrations
    - “Read for me” features allow your kids to listen to the story without your help

    App is out today – only $1.99 for both iPhone and iPad! Please help us spread the word!
    http://itunes.apple.com/se/app/the-wolf-and-the-little-goats/id448355294?mt=8

  9. Judi August 30, 2011 6:58 pm

    Thank your for a great post-these are good things to think about when looking for an app or when developing age appropriate apps. My focus has been on small children 0-3 yrs. This post has given me some great tips for my next app! Thanks so much for what you do! http://bit.ly/SmartTotRattle

  10. Elena Hansen September 21, 2011 4:10 pm

    My son has Fragile X syndrome and decoding, reading and Math are a struggle for him.
    What applications do you recommend?

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