The Top Educational iPhone/iPad Apps

in Apple, iPhone | February 22nd, 2009


Since the release of the Apple’s App Store, numer­ous sources have com­ment­ed on the poten­tial of edu­ca­tion­al apps. While these apps can’t com­pete with the gen­er­al pop­u­lar­i­ty of gam­ing and leisure apps, there are a num­ber of edu­ca­tion­al apps that mobile learn­ers will find handy.

Top Free Apps

Open Cul­ture: Our iPhone app gives you free mobile access to our edu­ca­tion­al media col­lec­tions. Free audio books, uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, for­eign lan­guage lessons, sci­ence pod­casts and much more. Per Apple rules, you will need to use wifi to down­load files.

Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry: Cos­mic Dis­cov­er­ies: Take a ride with the Museum’s astro­physi­cists through our Solar Sys­tem, the Milky Way Galaxy, and beyond. Cos­mic Dis­cov­er­ies is the first app to col­lect near­ly a 1000 stun­ning astro­nom­ic images.

AskPhiloso­phers: AskPhiloso­phers puts real philoso­phers at the ser­vice of the gen­er­al pub­lic. Have a big, lofty ques­tion that only a pro­fes­sion­al philoso­pher can tack­le? They’ll answer it on the web. And now on the iPhone. Check out this free app.

Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions: The lat­est news analy­sis and com­men­tary from the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions’ web­site now avail­able on the go for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Dictionary.com: Pret­ty sim­ple, but handy. A good dic­tio­nary in your pock­et.

FORA.TV: FORA is an excel­lent resource for smart video, fea­tur­ing a steady stream of talks by today’s thought lead­ers. To access their videos, you can down­load their free app, or point your mobile brows­er to m.fora.tv.

Foto­pe­dia Her­itage (iPhone — iPad): The new Foto­pe­dia Her­itage app for the iPhone and iPad lets the world come to you. Draw­ing on 20,000 curat­ed pho­tos tak­en by thou­sands of pho­tog­ra­phers from the Foto­pe­dia com­mu­ni­ty, this FREE app lets you vis­it (at least vir­tu­al­ly) 890 UNESCO World Her­itage sites.

Kin­dle: This free app from Ama­zon lets you down­load books straight to your iPhone. The Kin­dle store con­tains many free clas­sics books, but one of the eas­i­est ways to access these books is to vis­it our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Lou­vre Muse­um: From the most impor­tant muse­um in Paris. Accord­ing to Life­hack­er, this “amaz­ing­ly slick free app pro­vides a vir­tu­al tour of its gal­leries and lets users check out the works of every­one from DaVin­ci to Michelan­ge­lo. The app gets you up close and per­son­al with paint­ings, draw­ings, prints, sculp­tures, and even the French Crown Jew­els.”

Moon Globe: The free app puts the moon in your pock­et with 3D graph­ics and touch screen nav­i­ga­tion.

NASA: Dis­cov­er a wealth of free great space trav­el infor­ma­tion on this free app. The NASA App col­lects, cus­tomizes and deliv­ers an exten­sive selec­tion of dynam­i­cal­ly updat­ed infor­ma­tion, images and videos from var­i­ous online NASA sources in a con­ve­nient mobile pack­age.

Poet­ry from the Poet­ry Foun­da­tion: From William Shake­speare to César Valle­jo to Heather McHugh, the Poet­ry Foundation’s app turns your phone into a mobile poet­ry library:

Shake­speare: A nice app that puts the com­plete works of Shake­speare on your iPhone. As you’ll see, the app comes with some handy func­tion­al­i­ty: you can search the text by key­word and also increase/decrease the fonts. Plus the app auto­mat­i­cal­ly remem­bers the last page you read.

Stan­za: Anoth­er good app for down­load­ing free e‑books on the iPhone. Once you down­load the app, nav­i­gate to the “Online Cat­a­log” sec­tion and then focus on the “Project Guten­berg” mate­ri­als, which con­tains a long list of free clas­sics.

Street­Mu­se­um: This free iPhone app from the Muse­um of Lon­don over­lays 400 years of his­toric images on today’s city streets. Not avail­able for down­load in the US. Pity.

TED: TEDTalks need no intro­duc­tion. They’re per­haps the most pop­u­lar video lec­tures on the web, fea­tur­ing talks by “the world’s lead­ing thinkers and doers.” Now you can access these talks on your mobile phone too.

The Ili­ad and Odyssey by Homer: The ancient tra­di­tion and West­ern civ­i­liza­tion go straight back to these two great books. Get them fore free.

USA Pres­i­dents: A flash card app that teach­es you cool facts about the his­tor­i­cal line of Amer­i­can pres­i­dents.

Yours, Vin­cent The Let­ters of Vin­cent Van Gogh — Pro­vid­ed by the Van Gogh Muse­um in Ams­ter­dam, this appli­ca­tion uses the artist’s own let­ters to explore the life and times of the great painter. Includes videos and images of Van Gogh paint­ings.

Giv­en the iPhone’s capac­i­ty for audio and visu­al learn­ing, it’s no sur­prise that many of the most pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion apps focus on lan­guage learn­ing. Free Span­ish Tutor, the most down­loaded free app, comes from the 24/7 Tutor series, and it’s described as fol­lows:

24/7 Tutor pro­vides a set of the most com­mon and use­ful words and phras­es, orga­nized by top­ic and cat­e­go­ry. An audio record­ing by a native speak­er is avail­able for each ele­ment. These are all inte­grat­ed into a mul­ti-func­tion learn­ing sys­tem, with mea­sure­ment of progress tracked by quiz scores. A pri­or­i­ty-fil­ter mech­a­nism is pro­vid­ed that allows you to opti­mize your efforts by focus­ing on those items most need­ing addi­tion­al prac­tice.

Anoth­er high­ly pop­u­lar free lan­guage app is Japan­ese Phras­es FREE. Like 24/7 Tutor, it also offers a paid ver­sion with addi­tion­al con­tent and fea­tures. There are also free appli­ca­tions avail­able for French, Ital­ian, Ara­bic, Ger­man, Kore­an, and Russ­ian.

The sec­ond most pop­u­lar free edu­ca­tion app is Maps of the World, which allows users to browse 20 his­tor­i­cal maps. While this won’t be use­ful to some­one who needs direc­tions, it’s a fun diver­sion for stu­dents of his­to­ry and geog­ra­phy.

myHome­work is an inter­est­ing stu­dent pro­duc­tiv­i­ty app that allows stu­dents to keep track of their home­work, class­es, projects and tests while inter­act­ing with a visu­al­ly appeal­ing note­book-like design.

Oth­er pop­u­lar free apps cov­er the areas of SAT prep (Vocab Quiz SAT lite), spelling (Spel It Rite), and chem­istry (The Chem­i­cal Touch lite).

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The Unrepentant Terrorist? A Conversation with Bill Ayers

in Current Affairs | February 21st, 2009

Bill Ayers, founder of the Weath­er Under­ground and favorite whip­ping boy of the failed McCain cam­paign, gives a primer on the sum­mer of ’68, dis­cuss­es his favorite tat­too, and explains how the Chica­go Police Depart­ment now loves him. The inter­view was con­duct­ed by a col­league of mine, Scott Hutchins, and you have to like the iron­ic way it begins:

…our inter­view [start­ed] with a bomb scare. We sat down on the couch in a busy hotel lob­by and a wor­ried secu­ri­ty guard approached. “Is that your bag?” she asked, point­ing to a back­pack and coat that were def­i­nite­ly not ours. “Nope,” we said. “Oh boy,” she said. She asked a few oth­er peo­ple. The own­er was not there. She radioed in. I con­sid­ered the irony of being blown up while inter­view­ing Bill Ayers. I fig­ured it would at least get me a wikipedia entry.

Get the full inter­view over at The Rum­pus.

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Stream the New U2 Album

in Music | February 20th, 2009

U2’s next album, No Line on the Hori­zon, will be released inter­na­tion­al­ly in ear­ly March. But not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing­ly the album is already being cir­cu­lat­ed (not legal­ly) on Bit­Tor­rent. And this has moti­vat­ed the band to give fans free access to a streamed ver­sion on MySpace. To lis­ten, just click here, scroll down to the music play­er, and tog­gle the “Fea­ture Playlist” to No Line on the Hori­zon. You should be able to access the album in its entire­ty.

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Dylan and Baez Sing Blowin’ in the Wind

in Music | February 19th, 2009

Some­where back in the 1970s, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez teamed up again to sing Blowin’ in the Wind. Quite the duet, which we’ve added to our YouTube Favorites.  As men­tioned a few weeks back, Dylan recent­ly agreed to lend this clas­sic song to a TV com­mer­cial for an eth­i­cal bank­ing and retail group in the UK. You can now see this rare com­mer­cial­iza­tion of a Dylan song over at the Guardian. Thanks Stephen for flag­ging that.

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Hitchens & D’Souza Go Mano-a-Mano on Faith

in Religion | February 18th, 2009

I did­n’t think it would be pos­si­ble, but it hap­pened. I found my two least favorite intel­lec­tu­als togeth­er on the same stage, and King’s Col­lege in NYC made it all pos­si­ble. So, to mark the occa­sion, I bring you Dinesh D’Souza, the acad­e­my’s dressed up ver­sion of Ann Coul­ter, debat­ing the ever surly Christo­pher Hitchens. The top­ic is faith and athe­ism. The debate is heat­ed. And as you watch, you’ll see the charm­ing per­son­al­i­ties come out. The video con­tin­ues with Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10. 90 min­utes in total.

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Welcome to the New Age of Upheaval

in Current Affairs | February 18th, 2009

Har­vard his­to­ri­an Niall Fer­gu­son has writ­ten exten­sive­ly about the rise and fall of great empires and finan­cial sys­tems. Writ­ing for For­eign Pol­i­cy, Fer­gu­son now warns that the spi­ral­ing eco­nom­ic cri­sis may soon pose seri­ous threats to inter­na­tion­al peace and Amer­i­can secu­ri­ty. As we saw dur­ing the late 1930s, eco­nom­ic cri­sis often sets the stage for full-blown polit­i­cal and pos­si­bly mil­i­tary cri­sis, and we’re already see­ing the risk of upheaval in nine coun­tries, includ­ing Soma­lia, Rus­sia, and Mex­i­co. Fer­gu­son clos­es by say­ing: “Eco­nom­ic volatil­i­ty, plus eth­nic dis­in­te­gra­tion, plus an empire in decline: That com­bi­na­tion is about the most lethal in geopol­i­tics. We now have all three. The age of upheaval starts now.”

via The Dai­ly Dish

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On the Blogging and Cultural Virtues of Twitter

in Web/Tech | February 18th, 2009

twitterimageEar­li­er in the month, we made the leap into the world of Twit­ter, prompt­ed part­ly by Makeuseof.com, which men­tioned our site in a Twit­ter-relat­ed arti­cle. (Thanks Mark for that.)

When we first cre­at­ed our Twit­ter feed, my hopes weren’t espe­cial­ly high. And while I’m still not com­plete­ly sold on the per­son­al uses of Twit­ter, I’m def­i­nite­ly lik­ing the way that it works for a blog­ger. For starters, Twit­ter has giv­en us insight into who actu­al­ly reads Open Cul­ture. Since we start­ed things in Octo­ber 2006, I haven’t known much about who vis­its the site. I’ve been fly­ing in the dark, to be hon­est. But now Twit­ter gives us a snap­shot of our reg­u­lar read­ers. Because you can see who sub­scribes to your Twit­ter feed (some­thing that does­n’t hap­pen with RSS feeds), you can get a feel for read­ers’ geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion, their gen­er­al age range, and most impor­tant­ly their pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al inter­ests — all of which helps us tai­lor the blog’s con­tent a bit bet­ter.  

Still more perks come from our sub­scribers. Twit­ter gives you the abil­i­ty to see who your “fol­low­ers” also fol­low. And that inevitably means that your sub­scribers, shar­ing sim­i­lar tastes, will turn you on to new and dif­fer­ent sources of information/inspiration. Essen­tial­ly, your sub­scribers help you devel­op intel­lec­tu­al affin­i­ty groups that pro­vide good grist for the mill. In addi­tion, our read­ers also do their own microblog­ging on Twit­ter, and, here again, their short, pithy 140 word “posts” have sur­faced inter­est­ing con­tent that we bring back to you … with prop­er attri­bu­tion, of course.

Based on our brief time with Twit­ter, we’ve put togeth­er an ini­tial list of cul­tur­al­ly-redeem­ing Twit­ter feeds. Have a look, and feel free to let us know if we’re miss­ing some good ones. Of course, this list will grow over time.

Last­ly, if you’re not on Twit­ter, it’s time to get on and see if it works for you. Join here. And if you want to sub­scribe to our feed, click here and then click “Fol­low.”

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Sounds of Opera 1907

in Music | February 17th, 2009

In 1907, exec­u­tives from the Gramo­phone Com­pa­ny head­ed to the base­ment of the Paris Opera and sealed up some wax record­ings of famous opera singers. Now, a cen­tu­ry lat­er, these record­ings have been opened, dust­ed off, and (yes) even com­mer­cial­ized. Lat­er this month, EMI will release the record­ings under the title, “Trea­sures From the Paris Opera Vaults.” If you click on this NYTimes arti­cle and scroll down a lit­tle to the Mul­ti­me­dia sec­tion, you can sam­ple these cen­tu­ry old record­ings. The Times col­lec­tion fea­tures out­takes from Verdi’s Aida, Otel­lo and Rigo­let­to. Find them here.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.