Title of App: TED

Cost: Free

Creator of App: TED Conferences

URL: Ted.com

Target Audience: Adults, but fits in with Teens

Content Area: Everything

Evaluator: Kayla Cimburek

Medium

What do you notice?

Design Elements

Its easy to search and find new videos among the featured and popular ones. The app allows you to save
your favorite videos to easily find them in the future. Theres also a sections that allows for random video
playlists to surprise you with content. Multiple languages are available. Theres multiple categories of
videos to choose from, as well as their on air radio that can be played. Its also easy to bookmark videos
to watch again or in the future.

Describe the significance of

your design noticings.

Accommodations can be provided through the use of multiple languages. Students would find this app
very easy to use because of the large selection of videos, but also because its easy to search videos based
on key words. It can be used for multiple content areas and assignments, or even just for fun. The videos
can also be watched on the go since its a mobile app.

Content Elements

The amount of videos is endless as videos are added everyday with every content area and subject in
mind. Subjects can be bundled with key words or on playlists, so that everything is in one place and
easily found by students. There are thousands of speakers, so students can experience different views on
the same subject easily, and this also creates a diverse subject area.

Describe the significance of

your content noticing.

There are videos and video subjects that arent appropriate for school, so thats a concern with letting
students explore this app. This app creates an easy environment for researching, especially for students to
experience different views on the same subject from multiple speakers.

Mobile Application Evaluation Form

Mobile Application Evaluation Form Continued
Mark your response to each statement as strongly agree (SA), agree (A), disagree (D) or strongly disagree (SD).

Design
Usability: The app is easy to use. Navigation is intuitive.
Multimodality: The graphical, textual, and auditory features complement each other.
Feedback: The feedback to user is functional and helpful.
Aesthetic: The aesthetics contribute to the learning or engagement of the content.
Notes on Design:
Its easy to navigate
Content
Difficulty: The content becomes more complex as the user progresses in the app.
Cognitive Processes: The app engages user in higher order cognitive processes.
Feedback: The app provides feedback to the user that is helpful in learning content.
Playfulness: The app draws the user into the content in an engaging way.
Notes on Content:
The speakers in the videos create a critical thinking atmosphere for the student
where they are actively thinking and processing information. The Difficulty
comes with the content the user chooses to watch, so its up to them how hard
cognitively they want to think.
Integration
Differentiation: The app offers flexibility to alter settings to meet students needs.
Learning Objectives: The app fits with established learning objectives.
Assessment: The app has built in mechanism for tracking student performance.
Perception: I have an idea of how to integrate the app into teaching/learning practices.
Notes on Integration:
You could track progress in what videos they watch, but the student has to
bookmark or favorite them.

SA

SD

A
X

SD

SD

X
X
X
X

SA
X

X
X

SA

A
X

X
X
X

How do the design elements support or hinder learning of content?

Since some presentations have power points, students who have visual impairments may miss out on information that
is only presented visually. Overall, the design elements help the students find the videos in a timely manner, allowing
them to quickly watch them.
How does this application add value to the teaching/learning experience?

This app adds new ideas and perspectives that students dont necessarily already get it with their textbook. Its these
ideas that push thinking further in our students. This app would allow students who are more advanced to further
their thinking on an assignment that they get done with quickly. It also would help students who dont understand
concepts to get additional support to help teach them. The content is endless and I think that thats the real added
value for the learning experience.
Now that you have evaluated your app, Write a mini lesson on how you would integrate this app in your class.
Think About:
a)A topic
b) Standard you would use
c) Activity using the app

A) The book Madame Bovary: Emma Bovary, a listless housewife in search of the passionate love shes read about
in books, has many sordid affairs, falls deeply into debt and kills herself by swallowing arsenic. Her everfaithful husband Charles dies a while later of a broken heart, and their daughter, upon finding her father dead,
is sent to work in a cotton mill.
B) Standard: 2 Reading for all Purposes: Interpreting and evaluating complex informational texts require the
understanding of rhetoric, critical reading, and analysis skills
b) Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually,
quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem. (CCSS: RI.11-12.7)
Standard 1: Oral Expression and Listening
a) Work with peers to promote civil, democratic discussions and decision-making, set clear goals and deadlines, and
establish individual roles as needed. (CCSS: SL.11-12.1b)
b) Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that probe reasoning and evidence; ensure a hearing for
a full range of positions on a topic or issue; clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions; and promote divergent
and creative perspectives. (CCSS: SL.11-12.1c)
C) After reading the book described above, in class one day, the only assignment is to watch a TED Talk: Why we love, why
we cheat by anthropologist Helen Fisher. In the talk, Fisher will explain her work: My colleagues and I took 32 people who
were madly in love and put them into a functional MRI brain scanner. Helen Fisher takes a very different approach to
understanding love from Gustave Flaubert. The next day in class everyone would have a large group discussion about love
and how to interpret it within the story. The ideas from the book and the Ted Talk would be formed into one to create a debate
and a conversation about the ideas within both. The Ted Talk introduces new ways to think about ideas and traditional story
lines.