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Makers and users of mobile apps for children, take note!

The actual report itself is excellent, "Mobile Apps for Kids: Current Privacy Disclosures Are Disappointing." [The link is embedded in the article.] Improvement in this area is critical. When apps came on the market, they were like "valet parking"... where a user could get directly to a software without roaming the web. This was an attractive feature (and avoided unwanted advertising, a plus for parents.). Now, not only are apps collecting data that we are unaware of (PRIVACY!), but many are engaged in advertising, some that we are aware of and some that we are not (click through to a website, etc.) "Staff found that about 7% of the 400 app store promotion pages indicated that the app contained advertising. As above, this number is likely to understate the number of apps containing advertising because app stores do not appear to require developers to disclose in-app advertising on their promotion pages, and because advertising is a common way to monetize apps." Free? Not so much.

Educators interested in "flipping" their classroom (that is, providing traditional lecture material for review at home and problem-solving exercises in the classroom) now have two more options to provide core content with a minimum of effort.

How can we help these children feel the sense of flow when in math class? Children who get anxious about doing math have brain function that differs from children who don't, with math-specific fear interfering with the parts of the brain involved in problem-solving, according to functional MRI (fMRI) scans of 7- to 9-year olds that formed the basis of a study published online March 20 in Psychological Science.

This article examines how to best create flow experiences in video games. The author argues for 1) including a variety of gameplay activities, 2) allowing players to play at their own paces, and 3) letting players make choices.

Australia has been aggressively pursuing technology in education for a decade. I taught in Armidale, a large country town with a major university. It serves as an ideal location to work out the bugs because it is large enough to gather good research but small and contained enough to minimize complications.

Interesting study on rewards and motivation: Some excerpts - Rewards worked much better if they were given to students before the test, not after. Researchers found students worked significantly harder to keep what they had than they did to win something new. But none of the incentives worked at any age if students knew they wouldn't get the reward for a month. "All motivating power of the incentives vanishes when rewards are handed out with a delay," the researchers concluded. "Especially among children, the difference between right now and tomorrow is a big difference," Ms. Sadoff said. "For all students it's important that the reward be immediate." That impatience creates a massive problem for incentive programs based on state test results, which can often take months to turn around.

Thanks for this Kasthuri! This gives additional strength to the immediacy of digital rewards and students having access to their own "stats" (both potentially available in games and simulations). The thought of actual green-back monetary rewards for study/learning gives me the heebie-jeebies. I appreciated Alexandra M. Usher's comment, that "it's really important to reward inputs, not outputs [and] to reward behavior that kids can control, rather than just telling them to get better grades."

thought this had an intersting point about educational games focusing on the education value first and then the entertainment value as a second... I think this can be heavily evident with some educational games, and kids sense or know this.

Can video games help change the world?

3 billion hours of game play is not enough to solve the worlds most urgent problem?

Building off Meghan's post about Jane McGonigal visiting the Harvard Bookstore, here Jane talks about the potential of video games in positive social change in a TED talk.

Good article and a series of links from main page about pros and cons of latest e-learning and student engagement efforts in failing districts.