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EDUCATION WEEK: DIGITAL CURRICULA > www.edweek.org/go/digital-report

MAY 22, 2013

Evaluating Quality
In Digital Reading
ACADEMIC EXPERTS SAY TEACHERS AND PARENTS
ARE OFTEN LEFT TO DETERMINE EDUCATIONAL VALUE
By Sean Cavanagh

pps, digital games, and other technology products that promise to build early literacy skills
through mobile devices and other platforms
are everywhere these days. But are those products any good?
At first glance, the evolving digital world
would seem to offer abundant opportunities for
educators and parents seeking to put students
on the path to becoming capable readers. Many of those products are
easy to access—as easy as downloading an app from iTunes, or visiting a website. Many of them are free, or low-cost. And their claim is
that they can engage students as they educate them.
But academic experts and children’s advocates say teachers and
parents are often left on their own to decide whether various products have any educational value. One recent report compared the
current environment for judging the myriad apps, games, and
other tools to a digital “Wild West”—a descriptor used by other
observers, too.
The educational value of those tools matters a great deal to parents who are determined to build their children’s literacy skills
but aren’t always sure how, and to educators and policymakers
concerned about reducing the large numbers of students at the
elementary level who struggle to read. Just 34 percent of 4th graders, and the same proportion of 8th graders, reached the proficient
level in reading, according to the most recent state-by-state results
of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
“Materials are coming out fast, all purporting to be educationally
sound,” said Susan B. Neuman, a professor of teaching and learning
at the University of Michigan, who has conducted research on early
literacy. “There really isn’t any guidance out there for parents at all.”
In an attempt to fill that void, some teachers and parents are
turning to websites that offer reviews of individual apps, games,
and other products. The number of those resources appears to have
grown, in keeping with the expanding tech market. But parents and
educators aren’t always sure those reviews can be trusted.
Literacy makes up just one portion of the overall market for apps,

games, and other tech tools aimed at serving young children. More
than 70 percent of the top-selling apps in the education category of
Apple’s iTunes store are directed at preschool- or elementary-age
children, an increase from 47 percent three years earlier, according
to a report released last year by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at
Sesame Workshop. That New York City-based research center and
lab focuses on the challenges of educating children through various
media.
Apps focused specifically on literacy make up a relatively small
sliver of the market, about 5 percent, the report found. But a much
larger portion, 47 percent, focus on “early learning,” generally, and
literacy products were the focus of many of those apps, said Carly
Shuler, the report’s author.
Mobile devices and apps are poised to make a relatively rapid
migration into schools, some predict. Once “banned from the classroom,” mobile devices and apps were identified as tools that are
poised to enter the mainstream as learning tools over the next year,
and game-based learning is not far behind, according to the 2012
K-12 edition of the nmc Horizon Report, a research document produced by a coalition of media and technology organizations.

Focus on Basic Skills
What kinds of literacy skills are those tools attempting build? A
report released last year by the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading examined the types of literacy skills receiving the most attention on 137 popular educational literacy apps; it found that most
of them focused on “very basic skills,” such as recognition of letters
and sounds, and phonics, or associating sounds with letters, as opposed to broader abilities, such as comprehension and the ability to
understand and tell stories.
To some extent, it’s natural that apps would focus on fairly basic
skills, because most of those tools are meant to be used on the fly,
during limited periods of time, said Lisa Guernsey, one of the report’s authors and the director of the early-education initiative at
PAGE S22 >

RATINGS BY COMMON SENSE MEDIA
Numerous websites and services offer reviews or ratings of apps, games, and other technology platforms. One of the best-known is Common Sense
Media, a nonprofit organization that judges apps and other products on age-appropriateness, the quality of design production, and child engagement.

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Education Week - May 22, 2013

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