Students Evaluating Educational Apps to Improve Student Writing

Angela Spitzman, our reading specialist at KIS (who happens to be my lovely girlfriend), started an App Review club for 3rd-5th grade students. The main objective for the students was to identify, evaluate, and write a review about an educational app of their choice. The students utilized a rubric that was adapted from Mayra Aixa Villar's "7 Essential Criteria for Evaluating Mobile Educational Applications" to evaluate their apps.

This has inspired me to implement an App Evaluation unit into my ICT curriculum. I will require my students to type their app reviews onto their blogs.  Blogging their app evaluations will give them the opportunity to develop their writing skills in an authentic way. The publishing aspect of blogging will also increase motivation and engagement in the students' writing process. 

Here is the Google presentation Angela presented to her students:

Class Discussion (Slide 1 and 2): 

The students collaboratively discussed what qualified an app to be educational. They also discussed the criteria of an effective educational app. Their ideas were typed onto the following two slides. 

Criteria:

 Next, the teacher presented and explained the criteria for quality educational apps. She made sure to connect her criteria with the ideas the students provided during the class discussions. 

Rubric: 

Finally, the students were given this rubric below to evaluate their educational apps, and guide their app review exposition.