Technical innovation has dramatically changed the world. Do iPod touch and iPad have the potential to revolutionize school lessons? We think so!
In order to show this, we have put together a number of free and commercial apps which can enhance school lessons in several subject areas. With school books stored as iBooks on iPod or iPad, heavy backpacks could become a thing of the past. Updates - no problem. Access to the world's knowledge - via the integrated internet access. Annoying software maintenance - unnecessary due to cloud computing. Better results - achieved by making learning fun.
Even though all subject areas could benefit from the use of iPod touch and iPad, we focused on their use in physics lessons. Already the integrated hardware (e.g. accelerometer, microphone, display, ...) and the available apps are suitable for many experiments in areas such as acoustics, optics, video analysis, ... . The development of our own external hardware and programming of the corresponding apps presented a bigger challenge. We built a voltage-frequency-converter which converts voltage signals from various sensors into frequencies that can be recorded by the iPod or iPad.
