I have a colleague named Lou who has been corresponding to me about some work related technology questions. He happened to mention he had read a Wired article that mentioned some of the amazing iPhone/iPod Touch applications. Being a former teacher of Science and lover of Astronomy, I went directly to the iTunes App Store and found them and purchased them. I spent $21.99 to put them on an iPod Touch I could send to him to test last night.

Here is what I have heard back today in an email to me and his department marked Urgent, you must read:

Hi Trish and Barb,

I have been talking to Karl for a while now about the iphone and itouch. Do these devices have a place in our science curriculum and teaching? At first we chatted about simple tools like the iLevel. Handy in physics whenever you want to know if something is plum, level, or is a whole surface horizontal (i.e. a lab table). A digital, handy level is nice. We have one very expensive digital level in the lab, but the ilevel app is free! And it works!

Much more interesting, for physics at least, are the astronomy apps. Two itouch astronomy apps, for ex., are Starmap and GoSkyWatch Planetarium. Karl has been incredibly helpful and cooperative in working we me on this. Yesterday, he loaned me one of Computer Science’s itouches after having downloaded GoSkyWatch Planetarium and Starmap for me so I could take it home and experiment with it.

Even after one night of use, I am speechless. GoSkyWatch Planetarium, especially, is incredible. It not only is a portable planetarium, making it a huge resource for any astronomy activities a class or student may do, but it also is a celestial object identifier!!!!. Yes, that’s true. You point the back of the itouch toward the object of interest, the itouch screen changes as you move the itouch showing the section of the sky the back of the touch is facing. Wait until the object of interest is in the crosshairs and the program TELLS YOU WHAT THE OBJECT, CONSTELLATION, etc. you are looking at!!! I have not had enough time to experiment with the program totally, but this demands our attention as a science tool…at least for those of us who use astronomy in our curriculums.

Which brings me to my 2nd point. We should think about getting into the itouch, iphone apps development business. SERIOUSLY! We are teachers and scientists. There is nobody better positioned to think about educational applications for the iphone and itouch than us. This is a gold mine waiting to be harvested (mixed metaphore?). We would need to learn the language used by the iphone, and that is no small task for those who have not programed before, but…

For now, I would like to purchase an itouch for physics so I can continue investigating this tool and hopefully integrate it into all my physics classes. (Karl has offered to loan my his for a while, but I can already tell that this would be well worth the couple hundred dollar investment in our budget. I am taking a survey today just to see how many of my students have, or have easy access to, iphones or itouches. It’s looking right now like it’s about 50%, but it’s too early to know for sure. The younger kids seem to be more on to this than my seniors. Probably, b/c the older kids already had an ipod and are reluctant to get an itouch.

I am copying Karl on this, b/c I want him to know about my progress in such a short time and about my growing excitement about the use of this technology in teaching. As you know, I am a cautious adopter of technology in teaching. I like gadgets, but the iphone and itouch are NOT gadgets or play toys. These are serious computational devices and again, demand our attention.

My opinion of course.

I have attached the link to the site which describes GOSkyWatch Planetarium. The more you read, I think the more amazed you’ll be. GoSkyWatch cost $10. The other astro. app, I believe, is free [Karl’s note: $11.99]. iLevel, I believe, is also free. So the cost of these things is going to mainly be the cost of the itouch. I don’t know what is the cheapest way to buy these is, Karl would. GoSkyWatch is very memory intensive so if the itouch comes in different memory capacities the largest capacity would be warranted for that app. (This info. I gleened from reading some of the literature on line about the software.)

OK, that’s it for now. I have already typed for longer than permitted and you have had to read more than you probably wanted. Lou

I replied to him with the lyrics from Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Light the Fire

“We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it”

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