A Recipe for Building Learning Apps

When you vibe code educational apps for students, you're taking on a big responsibility.

You want to make sure it has a clear educational purpose, uses effective strategies, and works for every student while keeping private information private.

I developed a chart that can help you think about the elements of your app. I call it A Recipe for Building Learning Apps.

How the Recipe Works

The chart has three columns, and each one asks a different question.

• Learning Moves: What do you want students to do? Practice, explore, solve, create, explain, collaborate, or reflect.
• Design Lenses: How can you make that experience more effective? Think feedback, scaffolding, challenge, choice, and play.
• App Essentials: What should every learning app get right? These include accessibility, privacy, accuracy, and being ready for a real classroom.

Start by picking a learning move, then sprinkle in a design lens or two. You don't need every lens, and I think the best apps usually do one thing really well. The essentials are different, though. Every app you share with students should include all of them.

Tap Any Ingredient

Tap an item on the chart to see what it means, along with an example prompt you can copy and give to your AI chatbot. Some prompts have a placeholder like [topic] for you to fill in.

Each learning move and design lens also includes an example app made by a teacher right here on Teacher Hive. Thank you to the teachers whose apps are featured! Seeing an idea working in a real app makes it easier to imagine in your own.

Don't Skip the Essentials

Some students navigate with a keyboard or a screen reader. Some will be on an older Chromebook, and some will refresh the page halfway through. Essentials include include accessibility, accuracy, privacy, security, safety, and being ready for a real classroom.

For more on getting an app ready for students, see Before You Share Your App and Let Your App Get Out of the Way.

Take the Recipe With You

The Recipe is a Teacher Hive app, so you can open it full screen and keep it handy while you build. At the bottom of the chart, there's also a link to download a printable one-page PDF.

Build Around the Learning

AI makes it easy to build an app that looks great at first glance. A little planning and iteration can turn it into something that genuinely supports learning.