What+Are+the+Best+Apps

This seeming complex question actually has a very simple answer - the best Apps are those that support learning within your classroom.

Too simple an answer? Well here's why the answer really is that simple:

Evaluating the educational value of an App is a falsehood - any App is only as valuable as the way it is used within the activity it supports.

This realisation became plainly obvious whilst recently reading two blog posts. One was extolling the virtues of a site that listed 600 Apps categorised and rated by a matrix that determined their educational value. The other listed components that make an app educationally sound:
 * well defined learning objective[[image:iPad-Apps2.jpg align="right"]]
 * curriculum connection
 * authentic problem solving
 * engaging and motivating
 * evidence actual learning
 * monitor and track progress
 * align to common standards
 * and several more similar such ideas

Whilst accurate identifiers of educational value, this criteria needs to be applied to the teaching and learning program not the resources that support it. We don't put coloured pencils through a matrix to decide the best colour to use. Technology, in all of its forms, doesn't do any of the above. It's not the components of the task, it's how they are used.

An example - I used to do a wonderful unit of work with my Year 4 students on the Solar System where students took on the persona of an alien visiting our planets, sending information home via digital postcards. An essential part of that unit was to create our alien families. My students were shown how to use Photoshop to liquify, colour and add special effects to build their alien family from their own family photo. With an iPad that can now be done using any one of many photo editing Apps, which are easier to use and much cheaper than Photoshop. Those image editing Apps would score extremely poorly on the above criteria yet were an important part of the larger unit outcomes.

Selection criteria like the above evaluate Apps on their teaching potential and this is a misguided expectation of technology. ICT stands for: **//It Can't Teach//** - computers don't, websites don't, software doesn't, Apps don't - teachers do!

A French language teacher recently asked if I knew any Apps to help her, she had looked and couldn't find anything suitable. We looked and found some but nothing to her liking, so we went over to the French iTunes store but still couldn't find what she wanted. Then I realised that there actually are many Apps to support language teachers - any App that allows text input could be used with any language. But no, she wanted an App to teach French Grammar - what she really wanted was an App that would do the teaching for her. Teachers teach, technology is a resource we use within teaching and learning. I'm not sure if Ian Jukes was the first to say this but I heard it from him: //"Any teacher who can be replaced by technology, should be."//

Teachers are the learning experts in the room, it is a role that we do best, it is what we do well, don't attempt to hand it off. It is why criteria such as the above needs to be applied to our pedagogy and our teaching and learning programs. Resources are only as good as how we use the.