Video Review of “DoodleMaths”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RMVKTsfusA&feature=youtu.be
Written Review of “DoodleMaths”: https://thomascanedigitalfutures.blogspot.com/2020/03/doodlemaths-review-20.htmlFollowing on from my video review of the educational application “DoodleMaths”, I thought I’d reflect on the process and how the app might be utilized within my future practice as a mathematics teacher.
So let's begin with why I selected “DoodleMaths” as the application to be reviewed. I was first introduced to “DoodleMaths” through my younger brother who uses the application for his homework. I had a particular interest in this app because I not only had more experience with it when compared to an educational app found on the Google Play Store, but also because as a secondary school mathematics teacher, I am interested in learning how mathematics is taught in primary schools before students graduate and move into Year 7. However, I will admit that it was a struggle to fully explore the school side of the application as I only had access to my brothers app as well as a free trial version of the app that limited the amount of exploration with other features available in the app. Because of this, if I were to review another educational app in this format, I would select an app designed for use by parents’ with their children wherein all the analytical aspects of the app are available for me to look at and review in addition to the actual educational content offered.
The central draw of the app is in its Proxima algorithm that dictates the difficulty of questions set for each student on an individual basis, and as such I felt that when completing my review, it was important to discuss this first as the effects of the algorithm influence the entire application and how students interact with the app. I then chose to focus the rest of the review on the “5-a-day” and “New This Week” sections due to the time limitations on the video itself. In this section, I explored the way that students interact with the questions and lessons set by the algorithm and the language that is used to introduce these new topics before moving onto speaking about the advantages and disadvantages to the streak based encouragement. I chose to focus on these two aspects here as they were both aspects that I had experienced during my time helping my brother with his homework and were particular areas that I felt could use some improvements.
In order to prepare for the video, I decided to look through the Google Play Store reviews, and while most of the reviews were positive, I did find some reviews from parents who were concerned about the negative effects of the social media aspects of the app and how this had led to the demoralization of their children, and so decided to explore the way in which the app tries to motivate students to continue with their studies, but also discussing some drawbacks that can be created through a child’s psychology interacting with the app and how this could lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. I felt that it was important to discuss the app within this context as parents and teachers should be aware of the negative effects that could be produced through the use of adaptive response algorithm like Proxima as the website only make reference to the positive effects that can be brought upon by algorithms like Proxima.
Following my investigations into the app, I feel that the app could be useful as a homework tool in certain context, such as for younger students, however, as students get older and become more aware of the world around them, the app may begin leaning in a more negative direction wherein children can begin comparing what work they are being set with each other or losing motivation once they no longer have a parent sat alongside them encouraging them to complete the work set. “DoodleMaths” is designed as an app for students from early primary school up to and including Year 9 in secondary school, however, as a secondary school teacher, I would not feel comfortable utilizing this application with low achieving students in years 7, 8, or 9 as I would be concerned as to the potential negative side effects that could be produced in terms of their likely already low confidence. On the other hand, I could see myself using the app for primary school pupils who typically complete their homework alongside parents as they would be there to support and encourage their children in pushing ahead. I would potentially consider using the app with high achieving pupils in the early years of secondary school, however, this would only be after an investigation into how the content is delivered as well as what content is delivered to students outside of key stage 1.
Due to my inexperience in creating video content, I simply used the video editing programme on my computer, which unfortunately lacked the ability to place overlay over the original video, and I could not implement holding my phone up to the camera as this often slowed down the pace of the video and caused the sections to go over in regard to time; as such, if I were to reproduce the video, I would attempt to locate a different video editing software that would allow me to place video on top of the original face cam.
If I were to embark on a second review of “DoodleMaths”, I would like to allow the video to run longer and potentially investigate some other areas of the app, including the delivery on content for older pupils as well as the social media like aspects and mini-games that a number of other reviews on the Google Play Store spoke about as areas which they weren’t happy with. I would also like to use more of these reviews of concerned parents within my own review to demonstrate the concerns of other parents whose opinions wouldn’t be covered within my own opinions or in the academic papers around educational apps and adaptive response algorithms.
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