With so many educational apps available, it can be difficult to decide which are right for you and your students. While many rely on exciting graphics and target individual skills, finding one that is dedicated to true collaboration while learning about curriculum topics is very difficult.

Many schools use some great apps which students may use in pairs, but they must take turns or have an iPad each – basically they are just ‘co-working’ on the same document. What neither of these situations do, however, is encourage the crucial activities of effective communication and negotiating an answer to an open-ended question.

These skills can understandably be put on the ‘back-burner’ but if there were apps which helped you enhance these skills as well as covering crucial subject information, would you be interested?

This is where I bring in Digital Mysteries apps which are cross curricular and designed to help students learn in pairs while covering essential topics. Former Ofsted inspectors have explained how the app can enhance the rating of ‘Quality of Teaching’ in particular, saying it helps students to learn across the curriculum and “communicate their thoughts and ideas using specific targeted vocabulary that exists within the program”.

Two students work around one iPad at a time to answer one main, open question, for example ‘What is Theo most proud of about Ancient Greece?’ In order to do this they sort through digital, illustrated slips of information together, read them, and then group and order them as they go along. Each step e.g. ‘name a group’ or ‘choose a sticky tape’ requires a joint decision, involving lively debate and ideas being brought out into the forefront. This means they must “express their ideas verbally”, “discuss issues and problems” and “come to agreed conclusions”.

Once they’ve done this, they can print or share a PDF report of their session or play it all back with their teacher. This is brilliant for meeting Ofsted guidelines of encouraging reflection, higher-level thinking and problem solving. It is also a record of learning so you, and they, have proof.

To try the apps, just search ‘Digital Mysteries’ on the App Store and download or click here to read more about each task.

If you have any questions at all, please reply to this email or call 0191 603 1960.

Kind regards,

Natalie Taylor
Reflective Thinking
@refthink