Tuesday
Oct262010
Evaluation Rubric for Educational Apps
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 7:43PM Harry Walker is the principal of Sandy Plains Elementary School in Baltimore County, Maryland. Fourth and fifth graders at the school are piloting one-to-one computing with iPod touches. In addition, Harry is a doctoral student at John Hopkins University. He's investigating the impact of iPod touch on student achievement.
One of his challenges is wading through the huge number apps available. He's crafted a rubric to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of an app in terms of how it may impact student achievement. His criteria include curriculum connection, authenticity, feedback, differentiation, user friendliness, and student motivation. Click to view the PDF.
Harry is looking for feedback about his rubric. Please offer any suggestions or compliments in the comments below. The feedback will help Harry improve the rubric and make it more useful. You're welcome to use the rubric yourself (just email him for permission).
Don't forget there's a great app review community at iear.org where educators review educational apps.
Don't forget there's a great app review community at iear.org where educators review educational apps.
Reader Comments (21)
Hi Harry,
Great rubric idea for apps. Things to add - audio help, sharing of work via email, photo lib, ever note etc, ability to create in many curric areas, activities presented at random not in an order, ability to have multi player or collaboration via Bluetooth/wifi. Will think of more posted before but it went to nowhere.
Cheers from Jenny
Nice idea. Would be great to be able to get lots of people to complete for lots of different apps and put onto a Wiki perhaps. Then teachers could view before buying.
Nice choice of content. Perhaps use "student engagement" as the section heading vs. " student motivation"?
One comment about good rubric design. The exemplar column should always be first and go down from there. If students are going to skim, then they should see the best things first!
Please let me know when the rubric is finalized so I may add it to mt assessment Web page!
Thanks for the feedback everyone!
Many thanks for sharing this and even bigger thanks for letting me use it with my class. ;o)
Kathy,
Where are you located? Can I get access toyour assessment web page? Thanks.
Harry
I highlighted your post in my Daily Digest of Education related blogs today as I thought other teachers would find it of interest. You can see it here: http://bit.ly/aFxibR
I might just use that, thanks for posting! It fits very nicely on the Web 2.0 Bloom's Taxonomy chart.
Love the concept. I am working with High School students who have developmental disabilities. I am tweeking apps trying to personalize them for each of their needs. This rubric will be a good way for me to keep a record. Thank you.
Good work ! This will also help app developers like us to ensure we focus on the right things while developing an educational app.
Thanks.
Also, wondering if there are any new developments on this ?
We are using this rubric within our school district right now. Our goal in using it was to have a teacher fill one out for every app they have tried. Those scores are then put on a wiki. Prior to a teacher requesting to purchase an app or download a free one, they have access to the "app scores" via a google doc so they can determine whether or not the app would be beneficial to them. In addition to the rubric scores, we have also included a comments section so that the teachers can indicate something more about the app should they feel necessary. We added this because the rubric may indicate low scores, however it is because a specific feature was not necessary to a particular app.
Fantastic resource and great tool for collaboration amongst teachers who are spread out among 6 schools!!
Thanks for this fantastic resource. I am just beginning to research how apps can be used to enhance student learning and this will be an excellent tool to help with this decision process.
To fellow Mobile Enthusiasts -
We have a bunch of stuff about a IPod Touch Pilot Program at my school on our blog. Check it out:
http://iteachthererforeipod.blogspot.com/
http://langwitches.org/blog/2011/08/21/blooms-taxonomy-and-ipad-apps/ is a very useful alignment of apps and Bloom's Taxonomy.
Dear Harry,
I have an undergraduate student interested in evaluating mathematics apps and would like to use your rubric as part of her research. Please let us know if this would be ok for us to use. Thank you so much.
Kathy Horak Smith, Phd
Tarleton State University
Stephenville, TX
Kathy - Please contact me at hwalker@bcps.org. Thanks!
Harry
We are an excellent resource for anyone interested in app critiques. We field test all the apps, decide if they are worthy, and if so, we will write a review. Only high quality educational apps are reviewed on our home page, you can also find two top ten lists of the apps we consider tried and true classroom apps. www.teacherswithapps.com
Has anyoe developed a rubric for evaluating students' use of specific educational or communication apps?
I'm interested in what apps have scored high on the rubric. Would you mind listing a few?
I personally would like to know more about the study and also have many questions about the rubric. Wondering if Harry would be willing to schedule a Google+ Hangout at our Teachers for Interactive Language Learning Google+ Community.