Ponder Mobile

Ponder could be a great student motivator. Student comments precede the article titles as they appear in the feed ("Sally marvels" or "Sam begs to differ"), encouraging others to read the same articles and record their own reactions. The newer "elaboration" feature is nice, too, letting students add their own text. In general, however, the preselected content keeps analysis to a minimum. Ponder may be an effective way to provoke conversation among older students, who've been the app's main audience to this point. It's easy to imagine it in a college humanities seminar ("Several of you marked this section as 'well considered.' Talk a little more about that"). The app's developers say they're committed to making the tool useful and high-impact for students and teachers. It continues to catch up to the more flexible, easier-to-use features of the corresponding website, and some new features are aimed at helping to measure and promote better learning outcomes.

The app's developers are self-proclaimed lovers of data collection and data's implications for education. Indeed, this is one of the app's best features; teachers get extensive data about what students read, how long they read, and what they've tagged. Though this data can be useful, it doesn't necessarily suggest information about learning outcomes or reading comprehension. In a culture in which students habitually fail to read deeply or think critically, introducing a social reading tool that rewards broad reading over deep reading could be a step backward. With carefully curated content and strong expectations set by the teacher, Ponder could be a boon to a class's exploration of current events or opinion pieces. However, without guidance and context, it's a race to click, tag, and fly through as many sources as possible. That might make the class feed longer, but it won't guarantee that learning is any deeper.