In your assignment lesson 3.5 (after this lesson) you will describe a scenario in your subject area in which learners struggle to understand a concept or master a skill required by your curriculum. You will evaluate and select three ICT instructional resources that may help students overcome their struggle with this concept/skill. You will continue to focus on the subject area you identified in lesson 2, or you may find it necessary to adapt it to suit your needs.
As we shift our attention to educational software or apps for tablets we are faced with one important question: “What criteria can I use to evaluate the effectiveness of educational software/apps for my classroom?’. There is no one simple answer to that question because it will depend on the students you teach and the kind of function you wish the software/apps to perform in the learning experience.
The NCREL Range of Use chart gives you an indication of some of the contexts of technology use in learning depending on the complexity of learning and instructional approach and which applications of technology can be a springboard to a real-world context for student learning (Authenticity Axis).
Original source: www.ncrel.org/engauge/framewk/efp/range/efpranin.htm (now inactive).
What other type of educational software/apps have you encountered and where would you place these on the grid? For instance, where would you place instructional games?
- Join the group forum with the name “Educational Software and Apps” and start by sharing where you think instructional games belong – perhaps you can snip a screen copy of the image and annotate it to show the exact position of instructional games or any other categories of software/apps on the chart. If you (dis)agree with the first submitters, say why. Post your version.
Remember to use a file name that starts with your name e.g. Joe_Blogg_range-of-use
As you can imagine, software/apps with such a range of cognitive and instructional goals would be difficult to compare and evaluate using a single set of criteria. In the next section we will collaboratively create lists of criteria for evaluating educational software/apps.
