Category Archives: Ed Tech

New App Reviews: June 2013

I have summarized and reviewed another group of apps. Click on the links to read what I have written about each app.

I am most highly recommending the following apps:

I am somewhat recommending these apps:

I do not recommend these apps:

As always, click on the buttons at the top of this page for my extensive lists of app summaries and reviews.

Gamification

Each school day, I sit down with my four- and five-year-old students and ask them what’s new in their lives. For many students, it’s a challenge. They look around the room, notice that same pair of shoes they’ve been wearing for months and say, “My news is that I’m wearing these shoes today.” Or, they will tell me about Christmas presents in the middle of June, and birthday parties six months past. With a little bit of questioning, I can usually find something new in each student’s world, though it can be a challenge.

Then there are students–some of whom are very bright–who insist upon describing, at tedious length, their latest video game achievements. What stands out most to them is what they have done on Mom’s phone or Dad’s iPad. Granted, it is news of a sort, but my instinct is to cringe a bit. I wonder: what does it mean to have a brain so occupied with video games?

I want to be careful not to criticize video games too harshly. There is some evidence that television and movies are linked to childhood problems, but not video games. My speculation concerns not damage being done, but rather missed opportunities. What do we want young children to be thinking about as they go about their days? Angry Birds?

The conversation is complicated by a recent trend in education known as gamification, which introduces game-like characteristics to activities that generally are not thought of as games. Gamification can powerfully and positively affect a child’s participation in learning activities, because of course, games are fun. But how game-like do we want educational activities to be? Two-thirds learning and one-third game? One-third learning and two-thirds game?

In my classroom, I hesitate to use apps that are too game-like. They’re like candy. Once children have a taste, it’s hard to get them excited about healthier things like fruits and vegetables. So it goes with educational apps. A fun game-like app with minimal educational content might make the richer but less game-like apps seem like green beans. There certainly are apps that are game-like and also highly educational (strawberries?), but the games often get in the way of the lessons, or vice versa. If I allow game-like, content-lacking apps to dominate my classroom, I worry that I will find my students obsessing over games that teach relatively little, instead of devoting their minds to more valuable and enriching interests.

New Apps and Updates

I have summarized and reviewed three new (to me) apps:

  • I am recommending an app called “Little Writer” in the Tracing section.
  • I am recommending an app called “Motion Math: Hungry Guppy” in the Math section. It is very similar the to “Motion Math: Hungry Fish” app, which I have recommended in the Challenging Math section.
  • I am somewhat recommending an app called “Montessori Board” in the Math section

There have also been welcomed improvements to a couple of apps I have previously reviewed: (1) the “ABC Alphabet Phonics” app recommended in the Basic Reading section, and (2) the “Count, Sort, and Match” app recommended in the Basic Math section.

Tablets and the Developing Mind

The New York Times offers this thoughtful insight on the use of tablets with young children.

“We really don’t know the full neurological effects of these technologies yet,” said Dr. Gary Small, director of the Longevity Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of “iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind.” “Children, like adults, vary quite a lot, and some are more sensitive than others to an abundance of screen time.”

Although I sing the praises of technology in education, I certainly think we need to be mindful of its deleterious effects.