Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Thing #6 -- Library 2 Play 2

Although this Thing will be a little complicated for me (I do not know anyone with an iPhone and do not live in a town with an Apple Store), I will do the research anyway and see where it leads.

The first thing I found is there is a graphing calculator app! Wow, we provide graphing calculators for all our students via library checkout...and they cost $100 each! We could save thousands of dollars if the students could each download their own for 99 cents from the iTunes store. But...we can't have cell phones in school, but if we did....these would be cool.

I also liked Stanza, the free app that allows you to access and read over 100,000 books and periodicals on your iPhone or iPod Touch. This would be a great asset for students doing research and not finding the book they need in our small library. Also great for having "something to read" at their fingertips, anytime, anywhere.

And my science teachers would love Starmap for finding constellations, planets and shooting star zones. It does cost $11.99 though.

Google Earth is an awesome computer app so having it available on iPhone would be great! Reading a novel in class and it mentions a spot...google earth and find it immediately. Talking about a current event in another part of the world...google earth and find it at the point of discussion. Discussing rainforests in science..google earth to the hot spots and see what they look like right away. Great idea!

Searching for ways to download apps to iTouch, I found these helpful sites:

How to Download an Application on an iTouch
Kathy Schrock's iPod touch online applications for education
And my favorite Learning in Hand by Tony Vincent, a former school teacher who pioneered educational handheld computing. It's a simple straightforward site with simple explanations.

Libraries can create a video tour of the library and loan iTouch phones to play them on such as done by Baker Library.

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