PrayerTech is composed of two components: a website for educators, teachers and parents, and an app for students.
The website is easy to use. It gives real feedback on what prayers students have studied, their score on each exercise, how many extra points they have accumulated and how much game time they have earned.
The PrayerTech student app will run on Android or iOS tablets, as well as on PC and Mac computers. Once students have created an account, they will find a list of prayers to study that have been pre-selected by the educator and teacher. These prayer will work with the class’ curriculum and be consistent with the school’s liturgical needs.
Each prayer will have three to five interactive exercises. Exercises include: the approximation of meaning, root identification, vocabulary, prefix and suffix detection and aural identification. A full version of the prayer will offer students the option to listen to the prayer, read it, see the translation of each line and record their reading of the prayer and email it to their teacher.
Each exercise will be scored. There will be the option to go back and try again. Once students have completed the exercises there will be the options for extra credit built from previous lessons’ exercises. This continuing review and reinforcement makes mastery more likely.
Why would any kid spend more than the minimum time in any exercise? PrayerTech has been designed under a secular model for online learning. Instead of games that try to teach/review by having students try to hit all the words in a prayer, PrayerTech allows students to complete exercises and earn game time for a real online game playing. PrayerTech is building these new online games, the first is one called “Flying Fish.”
We believe by that combining these two models PrayerTech should encourage students to do more than just the minimum required, and reinforce learning in a practical and enjoyable way.
