New resource helps educators teach with digital apps


Common Sense Media says its system is the first centralized source for unbiased reviews of the learning potential of apps developed for a variety of platforms.

The sheer volume of new learning apps being created every day poses a key challenge for educators looking to teach with mobile devices, as many teachers say they don’t have time to find and evaluate the best apps for their classrooms.

But a brand-new service, announced June 24 at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) 2013 conference in San Antonio, could help.

Called Graphite, it’s a free online portal to help educators from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade find, use, and share the best digital apps, games, and websites for their students.

Created by Common Sense Media with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the service contains objective ratings of apps and other digital learning resources from professional reviewers, along with reviews from dozens of “Graphite Educators,” teachers who are hand-picked by Common Sense Media. The nonprofit children’s media group says its system is the first centralized source for unbiased reviews of the learning potential of apps developed for a variety of platforms.

“Technology can be a powerful tool to help teachers create more engaging and interactive ways of learning. But finding the right resources and figuring out how to use them is much more difficult than it needs to be,” said James Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media. “By evaluating the learning potential of emerging technology, we are removing barriers for any educator to successfully use ed tech to personalize—and even transform—learning.”

(Next page: How the new service works)

Users can search for reviews of resources by subject, grade level, cost (free, “freemium,” or paid), and type (app, game, or website). An option at the top of the page, called “Top Picks,” reveals the best-reviewed resources on the site.

When you click on a review, it tells you the price, the grade levels the app is most appropriate for, setup time, platforms (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire, or Nook HD), and subject areas—with a link to specific standards the app meets. There’s also a list of skills the app meets, too (such as “memorization, thinking critically”…), and the review indicates whether the resource includes a teacher dashboard and who the maker is.

For each review, users will see a “Graphite Rating” and a “Teacher Rating,” each based on a five-point scale. These ratings use a rubric with three dimensions: Engagement, Pedagogy, and Support. The maximum score within each dimension is five points as well.

With learning apps being released at an exponential pace, Common Sense Media is focusing its reviews on which apps are most popular within the Apple and Google app stores, as well as apps that are submitted directly to the organization for review.

Graphite launched in beta version with about 1,500 reviewed apps, and within three years, its database “will easily grow to 5,000 apps,” said Common Sense Media’s Mike Lorion. A full rollout is planned for the fall, and it will include a space for teachers to collect and share reviews of their favorite apps.

If teachers’ reaction is any indication, the resource could prove quite valuable. A recent online survey of teachers and administrators conducted by Harris Interactive for Common Sense Media shows 89 percent of teachers agree that using ed-tech tools improves student outcomes, but far fewer are using these tools consistently. Among those who are high-volume ed-tech users, more than half (53 percent) spend an hour or more a week researching which products to use.

“My students love using technology,” said Teresa Bodenmiller, a sixth grade teacher and technology coordinator in Milpitas, Calif. “But finding the right app or website that fits my lesson and my students’ needs from all of the options out there is like finding a needle in a haystack. Graphite lets me filter my search for exactly what I need, and gives me the best-rated options with examples of how other teachers have used it. It takes away the guesswork.”

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