Application Evaluation

Your Name: Carly McDonald Name of App: Johnny Grammar’s Word Challenge
Cost: Free Target Age: 4th or 5th grade

What is the app all about?

This app helps students practice their language by answering questions that are based on grammar, vocabulary, and spelling. The student selects one
of the categories and the app gives them questions for one minute. The goal is answer as many questions correct as possible in the minute and try to
beat your score as well as make it on the leaderboard.

Characteristic Evidence Comments

Active: Minds ON!
● Purpose- active, attainable goal
● Flexible learning and movement
● Appropriate level of student control
and agency
● Different types of This app is very active because of the flexible learning and
grammar questions student control. There are three different categories of questions
● Students can choose the students can choose from which allows for an appropriate
it level of student control. There is also the attainable goal of trying
● Attainable goal to beat their scores each time and answering as many questions as
possible correctly in the time allotted.

Engagement
● Allows the student to stay on task
● Coherence Principle: Avoiding as
many distractions as possible
● Meaningful feedback
● Progressive access to content (when
necessary)
● Motivation: Intrinsic and extrinsic
● Minimal distractions This app is very engaging because it seems like a game since the
because of time limit students are trying to get their highest score. Students will most
● Different levels of likely not get distracted because of the time limit. They won’t
difficulty have time to get distracted if they are actually trying to get their
● Earn badges best score. There are different levels of difficulty so the students
can work their way and also they can earn badges as they score
well.
Meaningful Learning
● Constructivism: Build on pre-existing
knowledge (making connections)
● Higher order thinking skills
● Relevant material
● Putting rote learning in context
● Different levels This is meaningful learning because the students have to build of
● Relevant material for pre-existing knowledge. There are different levels of difficulty
learning that the students must master in order to move up. This is relevant
material because even if the students are not learning exactly this
stuff at the time, grammar is going to be important and relevant
always.

Social Interaction
● Responsivity
● Multiple users engaged in mediated
interactions
● Support development of parasocial
relations with on-screen characters
● Johnny Grammar This app has social interaction because the Johnny Grammar
character on screen character is always at the bottom of the page giving tips and
● Goes over incorrect asking questions. This promotes the development of parasocial
answers relations with the on screen characters. They also go over all of
the incorrect answers so the students can see where they went
wrong and learn from it.

Hirsh-Pasek, K., Zosh, J., Golinkoff, R., Gray, J., Robb, M., & Kaufman, J. (2015). Putting education in “educational “ apps: Lessons from the
science of learning. ​Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 16​(1), 3-34.