According to Statista’s 2016 stats, iTunes App Store contains over 2 million apps with more apps being designed and uploaded every single day. A large portion of these apps are education oriented and cover a wide variety of subjects from learning a new language to virtually exploring the human body. However, not all apps do what they claim to do and, even worse, some of them have internal bugs and errors that affect their overall performance and render them inappropriate for use with students in class. That's why teachers are required to develop a vetting process to help them evaluate apps to use in class. Apps in the Classroom is a resource that will definitely guide you through this process.
Apps in The Classroom, is a free downloadable guide created by Apple to help teachers make the best of iOS apps in their teaching. It provides teachers with guidelines and criteria to assist them with evaluating the suitability of apps. These criteria cover four major areas: Engagement, Developmental Appropriateness, Instructional Design, and Motivation. Each of these areas features a number of key questions to ask when selecting an app. For instance, regarding the engagement criterion, teachers need to attend to the following questions:
• 'Is the app inviting and does it give a good first impression?
• Is the app intuitive?
• Is the app one that students will return to often?
• Does the app open up new ways to learn? How does it let students do things they haven’t been able to before?’
Read Apps in Classroom to learn more about how to appropriately select educational apps to use with your students in class.
