What do Secondary Students Actually Want from an Education App?
Yes, teens can be tempted to use their phones and tablets for learning – but for goodness’ sake, don’t try too hard to be ‘cool’, says Thomas Johnston (Y8)
Travelling in the car, on the bus or simply out for a family dinner, most young people now would feel lost without their mobile phone. Gone are the days of taking a book along – games, videos or social media chats with friends are the top choices as ways to pass the time.
On average, we’re told, a teenager is on their phone for a third of the whole day; that’s around four hours of what is likely to be mostly texting and meaningless games.
Many teachers and companies have seen this, and realised that an educational app is something that could appeal to those wanting to heighten their academic achievements and yet also keep their phone in their hand.
I know that I would much rather learn in a fun way on my device of choice than just through reading a book – but what kinds of apps are most attractive, from the student’s point of view?
Looking good
Well, first of all, a great app needs to look good. Many teenagers will be persuaded by the visuals rather than the promise of what they might learn, or even the features of a game.
The first impression always counts and some young people can be uptight about having an activity on their device that appears ‘childish’, or something that they know that their peers would not get or like to have.
It also needs to be fun, and something that the user will not get bored with. Features like daily challenges, and rewards for building a ‘streak’ (using the app for a certain number of days in a row) help to ensure that teenagers keep logging in regularly.
It is also good to make the app relatable to young people’s lives, and of course, it needs to be aimed at the right audience – ie you cannot make a game about logarithms for a seven-year-old to play.
It’s important for students (and teachers!) to remember, too, that you can’t learn everything about a subject from a free app; they are in addition to ordinary teaching, not instead of it.
Not so cool…
App developers are constantly improving and updating their products to keep in touch with the current ‘trend’ and are adding things that they may think are ‘cool.’ A great example is the rise in games at the moment that are similar to Fortnite.
Sadly, some educational apps are going the same way, adding snippets of ‘funny’ scenes that their audience may not find nearly as amusing as it’s assumed they will. I was at a trampoline park the other day and they even tried to make the safety video more appealing by adding what we call ‘memes’.
The response however was not laughter; instead, we didn’t really listen to the safety instructions we were being given, as we were too busy repeating the memes or discussing why they had tried to put them in there.
I tried out some of the apps that won prizes in this year’s Tech for Teachers awards (revealed in the Bett edition 2018 of Technology & Innovation magazine), and there are two which I especially like and have continued to come back to and play.
The first is Sumaze! It is a great learning game about maths and solving problems. What I like about it is its friendly user face and how simple it is to play. All you have to do is swipe and it unlocks a world of logarithms, adding and subtracting.
I also really like Duolingo, which offers courses for dozens of languages to learn and many different ways to practise, whether it be speech, conjugation or structure of language.
It also has daily goals and missions that if you reach you get a prize which keeps the player enticed. I have been learning Spanish for my trip to Mallorca.
¡Adiós!
Thomas Johnston is 13 years old and is in Year 8 at St George’s College, Weybridge.
