There are 80,000+ educational apps in the Apple App Store and math apps are the most common. We searched for ‘math’ in the education category and selected the top 10 apps for each of the 3 filters provided by Apple (Relevance, Popularity, Rating) and 3 age categories (0–5, 6–8, 9–11). Using these top 90 apps, we examined the basic information (e.g., price), educational content, and user ratings to see whether the information provided in app stores helps parents and educators find quality educational apps. There was a surprising lack of transparency and meaningful information. The Apple App store needs to explain how it selects ‘top’ apps and developers need to provide benchmarks of educational quality in their app descriptions.

Apple App Store中有80,000多个教育应用程序，而数学应用程序是最常见的。我们在教育类别中搜索“数学”，并为Apple提供的3个过滤器（相关性，受欢迎程度，评分）和3个年龄类别（0-5、6-8、9-11）中的每一个都选择了前10个应用。使用这90个最热门的应用程序，我们检查了基本信息（例如价格），教育内容和用户评分，以查看应用程序商店中提供的信息是否有助于父母和教育工作者找到优质的教育应用程序。令人惊讶的是缺乏透明度和有意义的信息。Apple App Store需要说明其如何选择“顶级”应用程序，而开发人员需要在其应用程序说明中提供教育质量的基准。