Liberal Education Today

Two first looks at iPhone applications for teaching and learning (1, 2) come from Jon Breitenbucher, academic computing at the College of Wooster.

* Molecules: Molecules seems like it could be a nice app to have available in a class where you want students to get a good idea of the structure of the molecule you are discussing. However, I think there is educational value and potential projects in creating more molecules to view. My version only has three molecules. It may be worth approaching some faculty in Biology and Chemistry about creating more molecules for the app.
* Bookshelf: I did not spring for Bookshelf but there are a number of apps that allow the iPhone to function as an e-reader. Anything that allows people to read wherever they happen to be seems like a good thing.
* QuickVoice: QuickVoice is another app that could have value in the classroom. It will allow students to record a class session for later review and it will allow faculty members to record lectures to be distributed as a podcast.
* Mandelbrot: Mandelbrot is an app that allows one to explore the Mandelbrot set. It would seem to have limited educational value as it doesn’t really provide a lot of mathematical information to the user, but again it would allow students to interact with the set as the class discussed it.

My favorite apps right now are Shazam, Remote, VNC, Urbanspoon, LocalPicks, and BoxOffice.