Rant #1: Learning By Heart

I try to avoid ranting too much on this blog – I like it to be a more positive experience than most other blogs at the moment! This rants going to be about pupils learning by heart without really understanding the concepts behind problems. I’m not one of those people who thinks that exams used to be harder, but I do think that exams today have become so predictable that students know the best way to get a good mark is to learn things off by heart.

The problem is that when you just learn something off by heart for an exam you generally don’t get the deep level of understanding that you otherwise would. I’d love to see a system where pupils were encouraged to really understand something and got the best marks for having a good idea how to apply their knowledge to different situations.

I don’t blame students or teachers for learning things off by heart – it’s definitely the most efficient way of passing exams. The problem is that the exam system really isn’t good enough and needs to be overhauled in a way that still rewards hard work but focuses more on someone’s understanding. This could easily be achieved by writing exam questions in a way that meant pupils had to apply their knowledge to situations that they probably wouldn’t have encountered before. Exam papers should definitely be drastically different each year too – otherwise pupils just learn to previous questions and answers!

Why aren’t Android apps selling more?

I was reading an article earlier today on the BBC News website about the fact that Android apps aren’t selling anywhere near as much as iPhone apps. I think there are loads of reasons for this, but it’s interesting that so many more apps are sold on the iPhone despite the fact that there are many more Android phones than iOS.

One of the main reasons I’m sometimes wary of downloading Android apps is that because the store isn’t vetted by Google the chances of downloading a rogue app or virus are much higher. I’m fine spending money on apps that are from big companies and have lots of reviews, but I don’t generally try out new apps like I would for the iPhone for this reason.

The other thing that may have been overlooked is that a lot of apps on Android seem to be free in exchange for advertising space. This means that downloads of these apps wouldn’t be counted when it comes to estimating the amount of revenue generated by apps. The article doesn’t say whether this was a factor that was taken into account when coming up with the figures. Angry Birds is a good example of this, but there are many others that use this pricing model.

The App Awards

Last night was the Appy awards in London and it sounds like it was a great success. The winners were fairly predictable – Angry Birds was always going to be a big winner, and it ended up with best game and app of the year – but it’s great that the creativity of app makers is getting recognised.

I heard on the news this morning that the industry is worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and over a million apps are downloaded each day. The only surprising thing is that there hasn’t been a major awards ceremony in the past.

I voted for my favourite apps – along with 30,000 other people – and I chose Angry Birds to be the winner too. Not because I think it’s the best game in the app store but because it’s brought app games into the media spotlight for the first time.

Other winners were also predictable. I’m not sure people want the awards to be clogged up with apps like Facebook with the backing of huge companies – surely it’s about innovation rather than just giving access to an already popular website that should be rewarded – but there’s no denying it’s a well designed app. Other winners included spotify and google maps, which were also created with the monetary input of huge corporations.

It’ll be interesting to see which apps make it in to the short list next year. I’m sure there will be plenty of apps coming out over the next 12 months that could have a huge impact.