Out of all of the eLearning application that are available to today’s students, none have nearly as many applications as the Apple iPhone. Because Apple has been so open to third party designers coming up with their own eLearning applications for their devise, there are now literally thousands of eLearning applications available for the iPhone. These applications range from very basic applications for middle school and high school applications to reference materials and study guides for postgraduate professionals.

Some academic institutions have already begun taking a forward thinking approach by integrating iPhone applications into their educational curriculum. For example, Albiene Christian University recently completed a very successful experiment in which it issued 2100 free iPhones to its students so that they could use a particular set of applications that had been approved for use for general curriculum courses. Nearly all professors were issued an iPhone as well, and the university sat back to see how the students and professors would interact with one another across this eLearning platform. It turned out that the program was incredibly successful and resulted in a signigicant increase in the median GPA of the freshman class. One professor referred to the use of these iPhone applications as the “TiVoing of education” allowing students and professors to store and review everything that they needed whenever they needed to. While professors noticed that most of their students almost completely stopped taking notes during class, they quickly realized that eLearning tools and today’s search engines have made most note taking increasing anachronistic.

One of the most exciting types of new iPhone applications that have been appearing recently are based on the new visual search engines that have finally become available to the public. Visual search engines operate through the use of complex algorithms that allow users to make internet searches based on visual input like digital pictures rather than keyword phrases. Although the technology behind visual search engines is still in its infancy, a handful of designers have already come up with some eLearning application for the iPhone based on what is currently available. For example, there are now iPhone applications that allow art history students to visit an art museum and learn complete information on a piece of art simply by snapping a picture of the piece and submitting it to the application. The application will then do a query through visual search engines and pull up all available information on the piece, including biographical information about the artist, critical analysis of the artwork and much more. In the years to come, iphone developers plan on having similar apps available to medical professions, scientists and students of virtually every discipline.