How educational are “educational” apps for young children? App store content analysis using the Four Pillars of Learning framework (original) (raw)

Technology has impacted each aspect of our lives, including education. Education is no more confined to the classroom; students are now learning in an anytime anywhere framework. The COVID 19 pandemic has furthered this trend.Through this exploratory research, the researchers have surveyed 144 Parents and relatives of children, in the age group two to twelve years, to understand the potential for using an educational application to make learning fun for children. Results indicate that Parents and relatives of young children are inclined towards using educational apps for children and opined that children would be able to learn better by using educational apps. Findings suggest that the educational app should have more of video and games, making the experience engaging with modules having screen time not exceeding 3 hours per day. These findings are of particular use to organizations involved in developing online education learning apps for children.

With over 15 billion Apps downloaded since the inception of Apple’s App Store, there is a preponderance of Apps marketed as ‘educational’ and designed for young children. Both teachers and parents seek educational Apps to use on touch devices like the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Despite the plethora of Apps currently available for young children in the iTunes Store, there has been limited systematic analysis of educational Apps and those designed specifically for young children. Researchers have failed to keep pace with the exponential growth in this technology. This presentation aims to introduce a content analysis of the paid Apps which are currently available as educational content in the iTunes App Store. The findings of this study provide important information for both parents and teachers and can also inform App developers when considering future designs.

Children are in the midst of a vast, unplanned experiment, surrounded by digital technologies that were not available but 5 years ago. At the apex of this boom is the introduction of applications ("apps") for tablets and smartphones. However, there is simply not the time, money, or resources available to evaluate each app as it enters the market. Thus, "educational" apps-the number of which, as of January 2015, stood at 80,000 in Apple's App Store (Apple, 2015)-are largely unregulated and untested. This article offers a way to define the potential educational impact of current and future apps. We build upon decades of work on the Science of Learning, which has examined how children learn best. From this work, we abstract a set of principles for two ultimate goals. First, we aim to guide researchers, educators, and designers in evidence-based app development. Second, by creating an evidence-based guide, we hope to set a new standard for evaluating and selectin...

Selecting high-quality apps can be challenging for caregivers and educators. We here develop tools evaluating educational potential of apps for preschool children. In Study 1, we developed two complementary evaluation tools tailored to different audiences. We grounded them in developmental theory and linked them to research on children’s experience with digital media. In Study 2 we applied these tools to a wide sample of apps in order to illustrate their use and to address the role of cost in quality of educational apps. There are concerns that a social disadvantage may lead to a digital disadvantage, an “app gap”. We thus applied our tools to the most popular free (N = 19) and paid (N = 24) apps targeting preschoolers. We found that the “app gap” associated with cost is only related to some aesthetic features of apps rather than any observable educational advantage proffered by paid apps. Our study adds a novel contribution to the research on children’s apps by developing tools to ...

In the global retail market, there is a plethora of educational software: smartphone applications, computer programs, and websites with engaging educational activities that can be used at all levels of education: preschool, primary, secondary, tertiary, and especially in educational robotics and STEM education. However, today a teacher or a parent faces a dilemma: Which is the most educational and appropriate app for children to choose and use? This article aims to help parents, teachers, and other stakeholders in the education community. It has a double purpose: on the one hand, to present an evaluation rubric for educational apps, and on the other hand, to make use of it by offering the vital characteristics and the evaluation of well-known educational apps (n = 50) someone can download from Google Play Store (https://play.google.com). Αpp selection was based on the following criteria: a) to be suitable for early childhood education (kindergarten), b) to cover a wide range of lear...

Mobile devices have becoming a new phenomenon not only among adults but also children of all ages. Children use these devices most frequently for entertainment purposes especially to playing games easily downloaded via online mobile app distribution stores such as Google Play and Apple’s App Store, more than for its educational purposes. Consequently parents and educators in general are concerned with the impact of this phenomenon – or mobile apps addiction – among their children. This is due to the inappropriateness of the apps content and graphics for their growing children. What is much needed is educational-appropriate mobile educational apps suitable for children. This paper discusses i-CARES, a five-phase framework detailing proposed sequential processes of selecting, categorizing, reviewing, evaluating and synthesizing variety of mobile educational apps for children. The framework was based on two theoretical models that is Howard Gardner’s (1993) and Jean Piaget’s (1928) theories of Multiple Intelligences and Stages of Development from birth to the age of 12 . Each stage of the framework consists of specific processes and tangible outputs to inform the selection of the apps. The i-CARES framework is intended to act as practical guidelines for parents and educators alike to make informed decision in utilization of any mobile educational apps.

As of 2017, an estimated 750,000 apps were available in the domain of education. Consequently, teachers have a monumental task in evaluating and selecting effective educational apps to be used in their classrooms. A number of studies have proposed, discussed and examined frameworks or classification schemes for evaluating mobile apps, but to date, no studies have developed and tested a scale for evaluating the quality of educational mobile apps. The purpose of the current study was to develop a scale to evaluate the design (n=4 items), engagement (n=4 items) and learning value (n=5 items) of educational mobile apps. The scale was tested with 722 grade 7 to 10 students (female = 339, male = 382), 33 teachers (female=25, male=8), and 32 unique mobile apps focusing on mathematics and science. The analysis revealed that the Mobile App Evaluation Scale (MAES) demonstrated good internal reliability and construct validity for each of the three constructs. Limited support for convergent validity and predictive validity was observed.

In previous research the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and New America have characterized the children’s educational app market as a “Digital Wild West” (Guernsey, Levine, Chiong & Severns, 2012; Shuler, 2011). The marketplace is chock full of choices but lacks essential information to aid parents’ and educators’ decision-making. In 2014, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, with partners at New America, launched a new study of the most popular educational apps marketplace by focusing an in-depth inquiry on literacy-focused apps for children ages 0-8 years. We analyzed a sample of 183 apps from among lists of the “Top 50” educational apps in popular app stores and those that had recently won critical acclaim from expert review sites. Next, we examined the apps along numerous dimensions, including characteristics of their descriptions (e.g., number of words used to describe each app; target audience age-range; specific skills mentioned) and features within their actual content (e.g., the nature of adult-directed information; types of activities).

During the last decade, there has been an explosive increase in the number of mobile apps that are called educational and target children aged three to six. Research has shown that only a few of them have been created taking into consideration young children's development and learning processes. The key question that emerges is how parents, custodians, or teachers can choose appropriate, high-quality educational apps. Literature has presented limited assessment tools based on advanced statistical procedures, which allow one to address validity and reliability issues. This study investigates the dimensions of using and operating educational apps for kids and presents a thirteen-item assessment instrument along with its psychometric properties. Data (N = 218) were collected via an electronic questionnaire from pre-service teachers of preschool education. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with Varimax rotation was used to investigate the underlying dimensions. The resulting structure included four factors, namely: Usability, Efficiency, Parental Control, and Security. PCA supported the factorial validity of the instrument, while the reliability measures of Cronbach's alpha for the four dimensions were satisfactory. Finally, a lucid discussion on the findings is provided.

The choice of mobile applications (apps) for learning has been heavily relied on customer and teacher reviews, designers’ descriptions, and alignment with existing learning and human-computer interaction theories. There is limited empirical evidence to advise on the educational value of mobile apps as these are used by children. Understanding the impact of mobile apps on young children’s learning is timely given the lack of evidence-based recommendations that could guide parents and teachers in selecting apps for their children. In this paper, we present the results of a series of randomised control trial (RCTs) with 376 children aged 5 to 6 years old who interacted with two maths apps in three schools in the UK. Pre/post-test comparisons revealed learning gains in both the control and intervention groups, suggesting that the selected applications are equally good to standard maths practice. Implications for the selection and use of mobile apps are discussed.