To work with smartphones and/or tablets is fairly easy. Almost every student has one of these devices and knows how to use it. Furthermore most apps are available free of charge. We do however want to provide you with some advice on how to organise this in your classroom.

First of all it is important to select your material/apps carefully (age appropriate, useful for your purpose, costs). There are so many apps that it might be a challenge to choose one that is suitable. Check if the educational app you want to incorporate in your lesson plan match your teaching concept. The following guidelines may help you:

Guidelines for choosing a suitable educational app

• Is the app free of charge?
• Is the app visually appealing and appropriate, and is the user interface of the app intuitive?
• Does the app provide new teaching opportunities or tools that are not otherwise available?
• Is the topic and the app-design appropriate for the target group?
• Does the app fit to the pedagogical concept?
• Does the app effectively deal with the topic and is it useful for the specific learning goal?
• Does the app meet the requirements for different proficiency levels of students?

Finally make sure all devices are fully charged and all software/apps are up-to-date. You might even want to inform your students about your plan to make a lesson with smartphones so that all students can bring their devices to school.