Product Review of Focus on Earthquakes

learners work with a partner or in small groups to read a chapter at a time while taking notes. Encourage kids to explore all of the components within the chapter, including any slide shows, animations, quizzes, or links to websites with relevant information. If there is a quiz at the end of a chapter, make sure kids write their answers and scores on paper. After kids read a chapter, come together as a class to review their notes, their quizzes, and to discuss any questions. Use the final quiz as an end-of-unit assessment. If time allows, integrate the earthquake tracker into each lesson by having learners view the locations of recent earthquakes and analyzing the relationship between earthquake activity and plate boundaries.

With pages of text, illustrations, slides shows, and animations, kids can learn about the causes and consequences of earthquakes. Specific topics include seismology, earthquake waves, measuring the size of earthquakes, and earthquake destruction by tsunamis, landslides, fires, and liquefaction. Kids can use the earthquake tracker to gather real-time and historical data while visualizing the patterns of earthquakes across the globe. This is important for understanding the connection between earthquakes and plate tectonics. It’s great that there are several opportunities for kids to take interactive quizzes to assess learning. However, the quizzes aren’t scored, which limits the potential of the assessments. Nonetheless, if you are looking for a comprehensive, interactive way to teach kids about earthquakes, Focus on Earthquakes is well worth the time and money.

Website: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id508040750?uo=4&at=10laCG&ct=website

Overall User Consensus About the App

Student Engagement

The app is pretty text heavy, but many pages include narrated slide shows or animations. Kids will enjoy using the interactive earthquake tracker to view recent earthquake activity across the globe.

Curriculum and Instruction

Since Focus on Earthquakes is a reference tool, learning doesn’t clearly progress in difficulty. However, content is well organized into topics and kids can take several quizzes to assess their understanding.

Customer Support

You won’t get instructions for using the app, but the home page displays a menu that clearly outlines the topics covered. Links on the Credits screen take users to government sites that support learning.