Teachers are using educational apps more and more in the classroom, especially now that schools have invested in personal devices for students due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With so many educational apps out there, how is a teacher to choose among them? Why, with the help of a good rubric! In this week's ED 554 module, I was tasked with selecting and evaluating two educational apps using Tony Vincent's Education App Evaluation Rubric. This evaluation rubric hits the nail on the head by setting high standards for an educational app. The app should engage students, be easy to use, and provide specific feedback to students. For teachers, it should offer relevant activities (including higher-order thinking skills), be customizable, and track students' progress. Because I would like to be a K-2 teacher, I decided to choose two apps that were created to teach phonics to students, in the hopes that I might be able to use one or both of them in my future classroom.
The first app that I reviewed is called PocketPhonics Basic Edition, which is available on Apple devices and clocks in at $6.99. At this price, educators can set up unlimited student accounts for phonics activities, but they must pay extra for students to access the "storybooks" ($1.49/mo or $14.49/yr), which I would say are a necessary part of the app. I give PocketPhonics an overall score of 3 using the evaluation rubric. The purpose of the app is to teach students letter sounds, first words, and handwriting. After trying the activities, I would agree that the app meets its purpose. Additionally, the activities seem appropriate for students who are just beginning to learn phonics. My only concern is that the storybooks mix in sight words with the phonetic words without any explanation, which might be confusing to a student. Additionally, the app recommends starting with lowercase letters, which are curvier and harder for little hands with weaker fine motor skills to draw.
The strengths of PocketPhonics are that it is easy to use, is fairly engaging, and tracks student progress. The activities are straightforward and clear, and after a quick lesson on how to get started, I think a pre-K or kindergarten student would be able to operate it independently. The fun graphics, music, and sound effects should keep most students engaged; however, I could see a student growing tired of the repetitive activities (tapping on the correct phoneme in a word and the correct word in a book) and the slightly robotic, monotone voice of the app's narrator. With regard to tracking student progress, the app provides detailed data to the teacher for each student, such as what he/she has mastered, what he/she needs more practice on, and how much time he/she is spending on lessons. The data dashboard is user friendly, and the teacher can even download a weekly progress report.
The weaker aspects of PocketPhonics are with regard to its facilitation of thinking skills, customizability, and provision of feedback to students. The app does not encourage the use of higher-order thinking skills, as opposed to some of its Montessori counterparts which allow students to experiment with letters and build their own words and stories. With regard to customization, while the app allows teachers to re-assign or skip lessons, teachers must do this manually (instead of it occurring adaptively) and in the student's interface (as opposed to via the teacher dashboard). Additionally, I do not see a way that teachers can alter the app's content, such as by adding new words to decode or storybooks to read. With regard to providing feedback, the app tells a student if the phoneme that they've selected is correct or not, but it does not tell them why. I'd like a quick corrective sentence, such as "this is the sound /b/. Try finding the sound /p/."
The other phonics app that I reviewed is called Lalilo, which can be accessed on tablets, iPads, or computers. Lalilo provides adaptive exercises to K-2 students in phonics, word recognition, and comprehension. Teachers can sign up for a free version which gives students access to all the lessons, or schools can pay for the premium version which allows teachers to view detailed data reports to track student progress.
Using the evaluation rubric, I would give the Lalilo app an overall score of 3.5. It has three key differences from PocketPhonics that make for the higher score. First, I think the content is slightly more appropriate for students, as Lalilo follows a clear scope and sequence and includes lessons on syllables, sight words, and word families. Second, Lalilo is more easily customized to a student's level; students take a placement test before beginning lessons, and the app is engineered to automatically adapt the difficulty of lessons according to student performance. Finally, I think Lalilo would be more engaging to students because: 1) it includes some interesting matching and multiple-choice activities; 2) there are two narrators and their voices are not as monotone, and 3) students can earn rewards such as treasures, worlds, badges, etc. to motivate them. The weaknesses of Lalilo are similar to PocketPhonics - the app does not provide specific feedback or facilitate higher-order thinking skills, and younger students will need a quick primer on how to launch it.
I enjoyed researching and playing these apps and I look forward to getting out in the field and seeing what people are actually using!
