Illustration by Steven Lustig
Smart Phones, Mini Microscopes and Adobe Creative Cloud Apps
Today smart phones are changing every aspect of our lives. Including how we learn and experience science. Recent developments in hand held imaging technology combined with more power creative Apps have created a fertile environment with new opportunities and ideas in mobile science education.
Take a moment to search Google for microscopes that can be attached to your smart phone. They are cheap, fun, easy to use and a really a cool way to look deeper into the world around us. They come in varying magnifications and prices ranges, but one thing is for sure, these mobile external devices will only continue to develop into a more robust marketplace for mobile science education.
Adobe Creative Cloud and mobile Apps
Adobe has long since been the dominant force in graphics and imagining technology. Now all that power is being ported down to mobile apps for our smartphones. Go to Adobe’s mobile app website to see the incredible array of tools available for mobile graphics and imagining technology. See the chart below.
I will just focus on a couple of Apps from the chart in this article and how they can be used for science and learning. The image above uses an Apple iPhone with an adaptable microscope using Adobe Color CC. Color, formally known as Kuler. Color is a powerful App that uses the camera to capture, analyze and organize color data. As it sees the color of light and objects it automatically captures color data, analyzes the color information, uses color theory and principles and creates related color schemes. Once captured you have any number of infinite controls over what you can do with this data and in sharing it. Its potential applications in the science and learning fields are endless.
The combination of these tools instantly creates endless new opportunities in education for teaching and learning science. Aside from the obvious Photoshop, Illustrator and more; a couple of related Apps that function well with this set up are, Adobe Voice, which is a really quick storytelling App that brings together voice narration, photos, graphics and audio to easily present ideas. And then Behance, which is a really easy to use portfolio page that eliminates the need for constantly having to update websites. It has the ability to hold the current status of projects, create portfolio pages and connect to the greater community both inside and outside of Adobe.
by Steven Lustig