Evaluating web-based tools and apps - Nik Peachey's criteria

Watch Nik Peachey talk about the things we should take into account when choosing tools and apps for ELT, and mention some useful tools:

Video provided by the British Council.

Here's a summary of his criteria:

1. Accessibility. Will all of your students be able to use the app?
2. Learnable / teachable. How long will it take you / students to learn how to use the app?
3. Learning goal / outcome. Is there an obvious (or less obvious) learning outcome that can emerge from using the tool?
4. Digital literacy. Does it help students to develop a useful digital literacy?
5. Price. Is it free or affordable? Are there any discounts for educational use etc?
6. Interaction - Communication. Does the app support some form of interaction or communication?
7. Authenticity. Is it something that students would use outside the classroom in their everyday lives?
8. Registration. Do students need to register and remember a password in order to use it?
9. Reuseable. Can the app be used more than once for more than one purpose? Can it become a regular classroom tool?
10. Security. Is there any risk involved in using the app?
11. Prolonged use. Does the app need to be used over a period of time to get satisfactory results?
12. Business model. Can you identify the business model which funds the app?
13. Context. Is it for student use, teacher / student use or teacher use only?

The criteria I always take into account from this list are:

• Accessibility (1). I never use any apps that may not be accessible by some students; everyone should be able to use the app I have chosen for a task.
• Learnable / teachable (2). Depending on the time available for each course and how profitable the app would be, I decide whether teaching to use it would be worth the hassle or not. As for me, I'm quick to learn when it comes to technology, so that isn't a problem.
• Price (5). I would never ask students to pay for an app, and I usually don't, unless it's really, really worth it.
• Authenticity (7). This point is important to me in most cases.
• Registration (8). This shouldn't be a drag. Actually, if students have an account, the teacher can easily track their creations.
• Context (13). This is clearly relevant, but it depends on what you want to achieve with the app.

Applying the criteria: Scrible

For the purpose of analysing and applying these criteria, I have tried out Scrible, one of the apps recommended by Nik Peachey in his presentation. Scrible is a tool which allows you to bookmark sites and organise them in a library, highlight text, change its color and add notes to it; all these modifications can be applied to the content of a website directly from your browser.

The toolbar looks like this:

The toolbar requires no installation of any kind. This is how it works and here you can see my results.

Here's my review, applying Nik Peachey's criteria:

1. Accessibility. Will all of your students be able to use the app? Since this tool is just a link in your Bookmarks Bar, it can be used independently of what OS you have, and it can be added to any browser as long as it has a Bookmarks Bar. As regards mobile platforms, it's only available for iPad for now.
2. Learnable / teachable. How long will it take you / students to learn how to use the app? It seems to be pretty easy to learn. It shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to teach.
3. Learning goal / outcome. Is there an obvious (or less obvious) learning outcome that can emerge from using the tool? This tool provides an alternative to the traditional way of printing and highlighting/underlining texts.
4. Digital literacy. Does it help students to develop a useful digital literacy? Definitely. It would add to the things students can achieve using technology for educational purposes.
5. Price. Is it free or affordable? Are there any discounts for educational use etc? The tool is completely free, but there is also a Student Edition (which requires an academic email address) and a premium, paid edition. However, the features provided by the free edition are quite decent, in my opinion.
6. Interaction - Communication. Does the app support some form of interaction or communication? Yes. You can share your results by posting them to Twitter, Facebook, sending them by email or creating a permalink, which allows you to share your results anywhere.
7. Authenticity. Is it something that students would use outside the classroom in their everyday lives? I should think so. This app can be used to save any sort of website and highlight information, regardless of the context.
8. Registration. Do students need to register and remember a password in order to use it? Yes.
9. Reuseable. Can the app be used more than once for more than one purpose? Yes; I think students could profit from the tool for personal use as well as for studying purposes. Can it become a regular classroom tool? If students have access to computers and are used to working with them in class, then yes.
10. Security. Is there any risk involved in using the app? No risk at all.
11. Prolonged use. Does the app need to be used over a period of time to get satisfactory results? No.
12. Business model. Can you identify the business model which funds the app? As I have said above, there is a free edition, a Student Edition (which requires an academic email address) and a premium, paid edition.
13. Context. Is it for student use, teacher / student use or teacher use only? Teacher/student use.

I think this tool is simple and quite useful at the same time. It could be considered to be between the Augmentation and the Modification level in the SAMR classification when used for teaching purposes. Students won't need to print anything, nor copy and paste information from the web into a document and work on it there, so using this app could save some work. For example, they could work on a Wikipedia article directly from the web. Moreover, it is an authentic app that they can use anytime, anywhere, and not just a learning app which they most likely won't use again outside the classroom.