Review: Edululu

04/28/2014

With summer break quickly approaching, it is time to start looking for things that will keep your children busy with some educational fun! As most households these days own at least one type of mobile device (tablet, iPad, etc.) Edululu is a great tool for parents that are looking for educational apps.

EduLulu is a website that gives parents and educators guidance on the educational value of apps on the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store. EduLulu ranks reviewed apps on a five ‘bone’ rating system. The Lulu in EduLulu is an animated dog and dogs love their bones so the more bones the better in Lulu’s world, it rates apps in the categories of educational content, teaching approach, security and privacy, technology, design and language quality.

The rating system criteria was developed by TFO Education (with the assistance of Thierry Karsenti, the Canada Research Chair on information and communication technologies in education at Université de Montréal), with a panel of other education and technology experts. Evaluation teams of educators, parents and technology experts rank targeted apps and individual results are combined to produce a final rating based on the five bone scale and also provide anecdotal commentary.

EduLulu launched April 21, 2014 by Groupe Média TFO an Ontario-based French language educational television station, with a focus on children and educational programming, and currently features almost 300 rated English and French apps and more than 100 reviewed apps will be added to the service every month. There will be more than 1,100 rated apps on EduLulu by December 2014.

The website is easy to browse and features “Edululu’s Picks” (the team’s favorite apps), Must-Haves and can you can search for apps by category. Each app also has the price and a link to download it from the GooglePlay or the Apple’s App Store so you don’t have to go search for it again. You can search by certain criteria as well (age, language, level, prices, etc).

It is a great for parents to be able to go to one source and quickly find out if an interactive app is suitable for their children.  The fact that there are English and French apps makes it even more useful for Canadian families.