Analyzing Apple’s Education App Store

There are over 500,000 apps in the Apple App Store and over 300,000 in the Android Market; a growing number of those are in the education category.  The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop released iLearn II: An Analysis of the Education Category of Apple’s App Store, a review of the 200 top learning apps for iPad and iPhone.  The report also highlights opportunities for developers, educators and researchers to influence this important, but under-scrutinized category by closely examining the content of children’s apps within the education category.    
Interesting findings include:

• More than a quarter of parents download apps for their kids
• Almost half of the education apps target preschool kids including most of the best sellers, and
• Apps are different than TV, few are based on known characters.

 The report makes six recommendations:

1. Address the ‘app gap’ 
2. Create standards for products marketed as educational
3. Protect kids from commercialism 
4. Update COPPA
5. Enable sustainability and profitability, and
6. Set a research agenda.

The report also provides social media tips for developers seeking to get discovered in the sea of apps. iLearn is a valuable contribution to a dynamic new market.
See Michael Levine’s commentary on HuffPo.  More coverage on Wired, e School News and kidscreen.