Criteria for Evaluating Web Tools and Apps

I\’m often getting asked what my criteria are for choosing the tools, apps and resources that I feature on my blogs and in my teaching and do be honest I don\’t really think about it that much. I look at so many sites and apps that I just get a feeling when I see something that I think will work.

As that isn\’t a very satisfactory answer to give people I decided to start exploring my own criteria for what influences my choice. I ran a workshop on this topic at IATEFL 2013 on looking at apps and how we can evaluate them.


I came up with a number of \’first impression\’ criteria that I think I apply before even thinking about \’how\’ I will use the app / tool.

Here is the presentation / workshop recording



You can download a copy of the presentation from here: Evaluating Web-based Tools

Please feel free to browse the list and add any \’pros\’ and \’cons\’ for anything you think I\’ve missed.


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I hope you find these criteria useful as a starting point for your own reflections on why you choose to use certain apps and not others.

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