Inquiry H
Solar Walk : My Ipad App Contribution : Mar 22
Solar Walk is an app for the Iphone and the Ipad which is a scaled 3D reproduction of the solar system and the Milky Way. It costs $2.99 and can be downloaded from the ITunes App store.
The app not only lets you examine the solar system as a whole but let’s you examine the planets – look at their internal structures, examine it from all sides, and play around with their speed of circulations. Besides planets, there is similar information about moons, stars and even man made satellites. The interactive visuals are accompanied by written information and a movie collection. The app comes in many languages – English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish.
There is a huge wow factor involved when you use Solar Walk initially. The graphics are breathtaking and the ability to manipulate them is empowering! But once over that, it is a fabulous tool. I like the comprehensive nature of this app and plan to use it with my grade 3 students next year. Though I am still exploring its affordances I would like to embed it in a T-GEM model to help students explore different planets and their characteristics.
Here is a you tube videos on the app.