Reader bee and The story tree, Start with art, Symmetricon, Best Kids Songs, Vemo-10, HooplaKids and Word Creativity Kit are just a few of the educational apps out there for the children studying now. In just five years the educational landscape has greatly changed with thousands of apps claiming to be educational. Over 80,000 educational apps are available in the Apple app store since the iPad introduction five years ago on July 26, 2010; these apps are largely unregulated and untested.

An article published in Association for Psychological Science notes that ‘Designers of child-focused apps do not begin with a blank slate. Instead, they are influenced by current trends in technology and design, their own interactions with technology, and their experiences and intuitive sense of how learning happens or what children will find enjoyable. While this is understandable, this approach is often tainted by misconceptions about learning and education

With so many to choose from it is not a surprise that some of these apps are less than reputable and do not ‘educate’ as well as they should.  Due to the huge number of apps coming up, education experts cannot go around reviewing each and every app introduced. However, the above mentioned article named Putting Education in “Educational” Apps: Lessons from the Science of Learning gives pointers to help one find the educational needle in the haystack of apps on the market.

The contributing researchers who came from four universities, a college and a workshop, took into account how best children learn and noted that “educational” apps best support learning when they are meet the four pillars of learning which are said to be where the science of learning meets app development and design. These four pillars are:

• Active in a way that requires mental effort and not just swiping
• Engaging, not distracting
• Meaningful in the context of a child’s life
• Socially interactive because children learn best with others including parents and peers

With the above in mind the number of apps to choose from ought to have been reduced by a couple of thousands. The article was written targeting parents and designers alike; anyone looking for an educational app that actually educates will find that these steps are a finger pointing in the right direction.