Abstract
Mobile devices have become increasingly ubiquitous in the contemporary communication landscape. Riding this trend, educational apps have proliferated the market, with many which claim to support and improve children’s learning and literacy development. Caregivers are often faced with the challenge of discerning the value of these educational apps and in choosing the appropriate apps for their children. In this paper, we discuss the development of a set of considerations to support caregivers in their curation of educational apps. This is done by performing a review of 28 past studies done on educational apps and synthesizing their findings to draw out common themes from the literature. These themes are then categorized into nine considerations in the form of guiding questions that caregivers can use to curate educational apps for their children’s digital play and learning. In the final part of our paper, we apply the set of considerations to three educational apps to demonstrate its utility.
Highlights
The advancements in digital technology and the affordability of mobile devices have made digital play an increasingly common phenomenon amongst children (Djonov et al, 2021; Hatzigianni et al, 2018; Lim & Toh, 2020; Toh & Lim, 2022)
For literacy development, and following our earlier work in developing frameworks for video games in learning (Toh & Kirschner, 2020; Toh & Lim, 2021b), we developed a framework to describe the rich meaning potential of educational apps for language learning and explicate the choices players have in their engagement and play in the app (Toh & Lim, 2022)
We propose the development of a set of considerations for caregivers that can guide them in their curation of educational apps for young children
Summary
The advancements in digital technology and the affordability of mobile devices have made digital play an increasingly common phenomenon amongst children (Djonov et al, 2021; Hatzigianni et al, 2018; Lim & Toh, 2020; Toh & Lim, 2022). We build on the work of Dubé et al (2020) and Kolak et al (2021) on the importance of helping parents and educators identify quality educational apps We echo their concern regarding the present lack of transparency and meaningful information to support caregivers in their curation of educational apps. To address this challenge, we propose the development of a set of considerations for caregivers that can guide them in their curation of educational apps for young children. Our paper is guided by the research question: What are the considerations, based on past studies, for caregivers to curate educational apps?
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