Educational Affordances of Smart Learning Applications in Science Education

Abstract

Science educators have made efforts to design and use educational applications of smart devices for meaningful learning. For the design of smart learning environments, it is crucial to understand the affordances of educational applications as well as their limitations. This study analyzed 40 applications according to their educational affordances: information acquisition, inquiry, modeling, and collaboration. Characteristics of smart learning applications were described along with specific examples. More efforts are needed to design smart learning applications for collaboration and to overcome the limitations of existing applications.