Balfire Offers Free Reviews Of Educational Apps

Balefire, a web site that reviews educational apps is transitioning to a free model so that interested teachers and parents can access all reviews free of charge. The free model will launch the first week of February.

Below is the Wing Institute post on the web site from 2013.

This website helps parents and educators make informed decisions when considering the purchase of educational apps. The site added 2,000 new reviews during 2014.

Balefire strives to be a non-biased and objective source of evidence based information that offers reviews of educational apps that can be searched by subject (Math, Science, English/language arts) as well as by the target age of the app users (0-3 through 19 up). This can be a useful tool for both the parent and the educator who are confronted with a confusing array of apps purporting to be effective uses of technology in teaching. The reviews examine each program against meeting criteria for effective instructional design.

Criteria include:

• Feedback for Correct Answers
• Error Feedback
• Adapting Difficulty
• Error Remediation
• Mastery-Based Instruction
• Frequent, Meaningful Learner Interaction
• Clearly-Stated Learning Objective