High School

Spotlight: iPhone/iTouch Applications for Education

Apple Inc. has released iTunes 7.7 which, among other features, now gives access to the iTunes App Store for downloading applications on your iPhone or iTouch device. There are a lot of excellent applications available and a whole section dedicated to Educational apps. From stargazing to note-taking we are going to cover some of the highlights in no particular order.

Trigger

Trigger is your trigonometry cheat sheet! Interpreting the six standard trig values as lengths of segments, Trigger encapsulates almost everything you need to remember those values, in an intuitive form. Segments shrink to nothingness or stretch out to infinity, making the nature of individual values clear; segments also combine to form numerous similar right triangles, revealing many relationships among the values as simple geometric properties. For complete information, Trigger links to a highly detailed document discussing of the the wealth of information to be found in the figure.

Trigger is compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch and will sell for $4.99

iEnvision

iEnvision organizes images from the Web into a concise set of groups, with indexed lists in each group. One click and you’ve got access to hundreds of comic strips. Another click and selections from your favorite are playing full screen. Or masterpieces from the great artists. Or a book for your kid. Or the latest photo from Mars. The possibilities are as vast as the Internet itself.

iEnvision includes a large set of sites built-in, and you can add more from the growing Web-based list. You can also add your own. Astronomy photos, News highlights, Children’s books, all on your device. Full screen. Indexed. Pinch, flick, rotate. Automated slide shows. Everything you expect and more.

iEnvision is compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch and will sell for $9.99

Flash My Brain Flashcards

Flash My Brain offers a slick, fast, and natural interface for creating, studying, and sharing text and photo flash cards. From Chinese characters to chemical formulae, studying flashcards with Flash My Brain is a breeze. Leitner memorization and customizable shuffling lets you study with your own learning method.

Use either the portrait or landscape keyboard to type up your flashcards quickly. Japanese, Chinese, and other non-European languages are supported and welcome. Take photos and add them to your cards. You can even add speech add speech and sound!

Flash My Brain is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch and will sell for $14.99

Karajan

Karajan is an easy to use music and ear training application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It provides lessons for learning to recognize intervals, chords, scales, pitch and tempo (bpm) with detailed statistics. Karajan is a great tool for music theory students, whether they are in junior high, high school, or college. It is also very useful for every hobby musician. With Karajan you have the choice to complete lessons either in landscape view with the built in Multi-Touch keyboard or you can just select the right answer from a table in portrait view.

Karajan is compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch and will sell for $14.99

Orfeo

Orfeo is a chromatic tuner and metronome for the iPhone/iPod Touch. The tuner plays four octaves of pitches from C2 to C6 and gives you a choice of sounds. To change the sounding pitch, simply drag the note up or down the staff. The pitch standard for A4 is adjustable and includes pitch standards for early music performance as well as a range around A440.

Orfeos’s metronome gives the standard range of metronome marks plus an exteded slow range down to 10 bps. It includes a visual display, the ability to set the rate by tapping and a choice of emphasis.

Orfeo is compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch and will sell for $9.99

Starmap

Starmap is the ideal stargazing companion. Easily find constellations, planets or shooting stars zones. A complete hand planetarium for beginners and advanced astronomers. Features include 120,000 visible stars, 200 main stars with names, kind and spectrum, 150 Galaxies and nebulae, Automatic viewpoint using the built-in accelerometer, Pinch and zoom as if you were looking in a telescope, Full coordinates, ecliptic, celestial equator, and more.

Starmap is compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch and will sell for $11.99

So as you can see there is a huge variety of apps available for this revolutionary device and this just skims the surface of what is possible. We would love to see interactive companies like Smart, Promethean, Mimeo, and others get in on the action as well as Blackboard and some type of Sharepoint Services app. Regardless this is an excellent first offering and we’re excited at what is made possible by these devices and what we can expect to see in the coming months!

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