Showing posts with label ipad apps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ipad apps. Show all posts

The Best iPad apps for STEM and Science Education

Exploriments on iPad are a marriage made in iTunes heaven. They are a boon for all STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) initiatives and a way to kindle an interest in learning.

Why Exploriments?
Exploriments are apps that use a visual, simulation-based model that invites interaction in the form of touching, tapping and flicking. This game-like feel creates involvement and hikes the fun factor.

Why Visual Simulation?
A computer application (or, Apple app) is more engaging when it is interactive, dynamic, and intuitive. As human beings with opposable thumbs and articulate fingers, we have all evolved standard gestures from interacting with the analog (or real) world. Here are some gestures we use to communicate or realize intention in the real world:
  • Jab or point fingers to indicate something
  • Turn pages by flicking or swiping
  • Move objects on a smooth surface by tapping to grab, dragging and releasing.
  • Stretch a flexible surface to increase its size, by parting our fingers
  • Roll a cylinder, or show traffic flow by "scrolling" our fingers 
The Language of iPad
Anyone who has used an iPad and has been impressed with its ability to understand what you want it to do, can map each of the gestures mentioned above to an iPad gesture. By making the iPad support universal, non-verbal "intention gestures" on its user interface, Apple has taken our ability to convey intention to a machine to a new level. We know that the iPad is strongly identified with these types of gestures.

iPad and Exploriments - Coming Together
Simulations are computer programs that display objects which need to be moved, dropped, tilted, pulled, pushed, turned ON or turned OFF, in order to interact with other objects, or with the context (environment) itself. Exploriments provides the underlying scientific model (i.e., the rules) of how the objects are allowed to interact - however, it starts when the user first initiates an interaction, which further causes an object to change its state, position or energy level.

Exploriments help you explore Pendulums, Weight and Mass, Simple Circuits, and many more interesting concepts by using game-like simulation and interactivity. This is the ideal toolkit for making learning a fun activity.

Test drive the free Weight & Mass app listed here: http://www.exploriments.com/ipad/Force.html. Bookmark the microsite and visit regularly - we keep expanding it as we add apps.

Happy Learning!

Exploriments are ideal for 1:1 Ipad Initiative schools interested in emphasizing group learning with teacher-led demos and for injecting interactivity into science sessions - available both on the web at  www.exploriments.com OR as iPad apps on the Apple iTunes Store - search by keyword "Exploriments" to see all our apps.

Exploriments on iPad: Episode III

[Previously, in "Exploriments..."

Episode I spoke about how seductive alternatives are drawing people away from education.
Episode II talked about how Simulation can be our Knight in Shining Armor.]

This episode completes the Trilogy by talking about how simulation as used by Exploriments is most effective when it joins forces with the awesomely cool iPad, and emerges as the teacher's ultimate ally in the war on science illiteracy.

An application generates more engagement when it is interactive, dynamic, and intuitive. As humans with opposable thumbs and articulate fingers, we have all evolved standard gestures from interacting with the "analog", or real world. The iPad's interface supports all these instinctive gestures, making it the ideal platform for our simulation based, game-like apps.

Visual simulations and iPads use similar languages of interaction. Add to that the Exploriments frameworks (Pendulums, Weight and Mass, Simple Circuits, etc), and what you get is the ideal toolkit for making learning a game-like, fun, and engaging activity.