Five questions worth asking first
A new app can look very good in a demonstration. Everyone has a working device. The wireless connection behaves. The example lesson fits neatly into thirty minutes.
Using it with students is different. A student forgets a password. One Chromebook is missing. A teacher has forty minutes for the lesson and no spare time to rebuild it around another login.
Before adding a new app, I think it is worth asking five questions.
1. What do students need to learn or do?
Start by naming the student work.
Maybe students need to compare two explanations and decide which one is better supported by evidence. Maybe they need to practice reading aloud and listen for places where their phrasing breaks down. Maybe they need to revise a paragraph after receiving feedback.
Write that down before looking at the app’s features. A tool is easier to judge when the lesson is already clear.
2. What problem are we trying to solve?
“It looks useful” is not much help when a teacher is deciding whether to change a lesson.
The problem should be something a teacher can recognize. Perhaps only a few students are participating in the discussion. Perhaps feedback takes so long that students have moved on before they receive it. Perhaps an absent student has no good way to see what happened in class.
Once the problem is clear, the teacher can ask whether the app actually helps with it.
3. What will this replace?
Every new tool takes time from something else.
If it adds another login, another inbox, another place to post directions, and another place to find student work, it may be creating a problem instead of solving one. Teachers should be able to name what becomes simpler or what they can stop doing.
Sometimes the answer is that nothing should be replaced. The existing routine may already work well enough.
4. Who gets more access, and who gets more work?
Try to picture the lesson on an ordinary day.
Can a student who was absent find the directions? Can a group share one device without one student doing all the work? Can the teacher see what each student understands? Will someone have to copy scores or comments into another system later?
An app may help many students and still create a barrier for a few. That does not always mean the school should reject it. It does mean the teacher needs to notice the barrier and decide what to do about it.
5. What student information moves through the tool?
Student names, writing, voice recordings, images, and conversations all deserve attention. Before using a new service, check what information it collects, where that information goes, and whether the tool fits school policy.
If a lesson works without putting student information into the app, that may be the better first try.
Try it with one class
A small test usually tells us more than a long demonstration.
Use the app for one lesson with one class. Keep a familiar option available in case the technology fails. Look at the student work afterward. Ask students where they got stuck. Notice whether the tool helped with the original problem and whether it created extra work for the teacher.
Then decide whether it has earned a place in the next lesson.
Schools do not need to refuse every new tool. We do need to be deliberate about the tools we ask teachers and students to use. If the answer is not clear after one class, that is useful information too.
EdTech Alchemy 