Education Week - May 22, 2013 - Special Report - S23

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more expensive products do because
there’s little incentive for developers
to take on costs they may have little
opportunity to recoup, he said.
Mr. Kamil, who has consulted
for developers of games and other
platforms, recalled his experience
helping a company that was interested in incorporating math,
science, and vocabulary-building
skills into a game for older children. That process, he noted, took
two years and was supported by a
federal grant.
Researching whether an app
or other platform will promote
literacy skills is also difficult because the product’s effectiveness
often depends on how it is used—
such as how involved an adult is
in guiding a child through an activity, Mr. Kamil added. Another
complication: many tech platforms, including apps, are changing so quickly that by the time a
study is completed, it may be out
of date, he said.
Many products on the market
are “transient,” Mr. Kamil said.
“They can disappear tomorrow.”
As it now stands, many apps and

“

president and general manager,
education, said his site provides a
service and fills a void created by
the rapid rise of cheap apps and
other digital products.
“If you’ve got a $1.99 app, there
aren’t a lot of people who are going
to invest in a research project,” Mr.
Lorion said. His organization’s
credibility with parents, educators, and others, he said, “gets
back to the strength of the rubric”
for judging them.
Katie Dillon, of La Jolla, Calif.,
uses the Common Sense site to

review apps and other products
she downloads from her family’s
iPad and iPhone, to make sure
they’re appropriate for her 6-yearold daughter. She carefully reads
the comments posted by other
parents, and uses the site’s search
function to rove from product to
product.
“It’s nice to have someplace to
go to back up what you think,” Ms.
Dillon said.
Warren Buckleitner, the editor
and founder of Children’s Technology Review, released as a monthly

pdf,

said that in the years since
his organization was founded in
1993, with a focus on software,
there has been an “explosion” of
websites and materials focused on
reviewing apps, games, and other
digital products. His publication,
which offers a searchable Web database and likens its model to that
of Consumer Reports, charges subscribers $30 per year.
Mr. Buckleitner’s organization
rates apps on a rubric based on
ease of use, educational value,
and other factors. It dates reviews,

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SUSAN B. NEUMAN
Professor, Teaching and Learning
University of Michigan

Evaluating Reviews
As the number of apps, games,
and other digital offerings has
grown, so has the number organizations offering reviews of those
products for teachers, parents, and
other audiences.
One of the best known is Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that uses a “learning rating”
system for judging apps, games,
and websites. Those products are
rated on the basis of age appropriateness, learning potential, the
overall quality of design production, and child engagement.
Common Sense Media’s overall
site, which includes reviews of
products such as books and movies, draws 3 million unique visitors a month, according to the organization. Mike Lorion, the vice

The
Group
Effect

MAY 22, 2013

S23

corrects them, updates them with
new information, and identifies
who conducted the review.
“We like to call a review the
start of a conversation,” he said.
Mr. Buckleitner said he recommends that parents and teachers
“triangulate” reviews offered by
different sites and not “take a single-source for anything.” The quality of reviews across sites varies
greatly, he said.
“It’s a space that could use
some sunshine, that’s for sure,”
he said. n

Materials
are coming
out fast, all
purporting to be
educationally
sound. There
really isn’t any
guidance.”

games have a common limitation,
in that they don’t have a diagnostic
function that would allow a user to
determine a child’s strengths and
weaknesses before beginning an
activity. Adding that feature, Mr.
Kamil said, would bring costs and
complications for developers.

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Education Week - May 22, 2013 - Special Report

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - May 22, 2013 - Special Report