Moving beyond tracing: The nature, availability and quality of digital apps to support children’s writing

Abstract

Young children’s use of tablets and smartphones has proliferated in recent years. Furthermore, apps are being developed at breakneck pace, often designed to support children’s learning in a variety of academic skills across various domains. While a growing body of literature focuses upon the use of multimedia apps to support emergent literacy, little is known about the nature and quality of apps, particularly as it relates to early writing. Thus, the purpose of this study was to comprehensively and critically examine available early writing apps on a particular popular platform (iOS) in order to understand their quality, availability and nature. Initial search terms yielded considerable results (n = 1,633). After examining apps based upon inclusion/exclusion criteria, a final sample of 472 apps was used for analysis. Apps were analysed for focal skill(s), multimodality, interactivity, assessment capabilities, appropriateness and factors related to equity (cost of apps for iOS and availability across other platforms associated with more affordable devices, i.e. Google Play and Amazon). Findings indicate that despite the prevalence of low-cost and free apps designed to support writing, these apps address highly constrained content (e.g., letter tracing) and are low in terms of various quality metrics. This study has implications for parents, teachers, researchers and developers and suggests a general lack of quality early writing apps and the need for multifaceted, higher quality and equitable media for the benefit of young children, their teachers and their parents.

Connecting the dots: Understanding the interrelated impacts of type, quality and children's awareness of design features and the mathematics content learning goals in digital math games and related learning outcomes

“…These results, in particular, help move the field forward. While Attard (2018) noted the helpfulness of design features with purposeful and timely feedback (which aligns with the CF and GF types in our study) and Quinn and Bliss (2019) found that quality features allowed children to understand the goal of the game without adult intervention, our analysis provides a way to explicitly define quality in terms of the important connections between the quality of the design features and the MCLG.…”

“…The quality of the design features and representations may vary depending on the multimodal, interactive, assessment and intuitiveness that goes into the game's design (Quinn & Bliss, 2019). This means that features can influence how children learn in a digital math game, making it important to understand how features with differing levels of quality might impact children's learning.…”

“…They noted that ‘these apps all used representations or icons that can be manipulated/moved, but in simple ways’ (Larkin & Milford, 2018, p. 23). (Note: Concerns about the lack of quality of apps for children have also been reported about digital apps designed to teach writing; Quinn & Bliss, 2019). This observation highlights that it is not enough for a digital math game to simply include representations that engage children in haptic ways, but that this engagement must be purposeful and focused on high‐level mathematical activity.…”

“…These included three types of scaffolding (e.g., success/failure, answer/solution, enhanced) that can significantly influence learning; design features (e.g., graphics, environments and narratives) need to be aligned with learning objectives; and medium design (i.e., the variety of actions to explore the game) provides better affordances. Quinn and Bliss (2019) analysed various apps and found that better quality features provided a clear, usable gaming environment where adult intervention was not needed to understand the goal of the game. The quality of instructions, scaffolding, usability and ability to maintain user's focus were higher in games that had multiple components, which provided a more intuitive game experience for children to learn.…”

Content Analysis of Mobile Device Applications for Artistic Creation for Children between 4 and 12 Years of Age

“…In this context, digital environments are a reality, and new generations have appropriated these media by integrating them into their natural habitat to an extent no other generation has experienced [6][7][8]. Some of the key factors in this development have been the proliferation of increasingly advanced mobile devices and the development of connectivity and communication, with a focus on entertainment and information networks [9].…”