• Boston, MA / October 27
• New York, NY / October 29
• Seattle, WA / November 17
• Chicago, IL / December 1
• Washington, DC / December 3
• Cupertino, CA / December 8
• Los Angeles, CA / December 10

Though I graduated from college (Go Bears!) not so long ago, in computer years it seems like ages: notebook computers have almost completely replaced spiral-bound notebooks, and PowerPoint and Keynote are increasingly supplanting the chalkboard. The changing dynamics of teaching demand a change in the way students take notes and learn, and Useful Fruit's Pear Note (available for free trial for 30 days, or $39.99 for purchase) addresses these changing dynamics for students. It's like TiVo for note taking.

I have been waiting for Logos for Mac, the Bible research application suite, for over a year. I take that back: I have been waiting for Logos for the Mac for over five years, when I first switched to Mac after a brief and unfortunate experience in the Windows world.

Before we go any further I must stop to address the fear which has already gripped many Mac users. Let me say this clearly: this is no hastily slapped together Mac "port" of a Windows application. In fact 15 seconds into the introductory video, they proudly announce: "What we've done for the Mac is rebuild it from the ground up."

You can tell.

Logos for Mac looks and feels like a native Mac application. How native? If you can copy a passage from Logos to Microsoft Word for Mac, it automatically creates a footnote in APA, BibTex, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, Refer-BiblX, RIS, SBL, or Turabian format (whichever you choose in the preferences). As someone who has no love for footnoting, this may be my favorite feature of any piece of software ever.

There are also Mac-specific support videos to help you learn to use the software and native Mac "Help" available in the application itself.

The Mac version does not support all of the Windows features, although they say they "plan to add many of these features in upcoming versions." You can see a list of some of those features on a chart of features covered at Camp Logos, a two-day training seminar for Logos users. The same page also makes it clear that they have been thinking about Mac users for these seminars, and in fact usually have someone there who is a Mac user to help if needed.

TeX is a typesetting standard that, among other things, allows you to typeset complex math formulas. One flavor of Tex is LaTeX, for which LaTeXiT serves as a front-end for on Mac OS X. Using LaTeXiT, one can drag and drop complex math formulas to a number of apps -- Pages, Keynote and TextEdit, to name a few.

While the LaTeXiT workflow is fairly simple and straightforward, getting it setup and running may not prove to be the most clear-cut and easy process.

Education is deeply imbued in the Apple DNA. In Apple's early days, the education market served as a base from which it would grow from and, in the process, introduce many of us to personal computing as well as a new way of learning.

Similarly, the iPhone has the potential to change the dynamics of learning. The device's multi-touch display has not only reinvented and breathed new life into apps that had previously lived on other platforms, but has also spurred the creation of a new class of learning apps.

One of these apps is Mental Case, a flash card application available on both Mac OS X and the iPhone/iPod touch. At its very core, Mental Case's main goal is to facilitate the flash card creation and studying process.

From Quentin Tarantino's classic, Pulp Fiction:

Vincent: ...But you know what the funniest thing about Europe is?

Jules: What?

Vincent: It's the little differences. I mean, they got the same [things] over there that we got here, but it's just - it's just there it's a little different.

Jules: Example?

Vincent: ...Do you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?

Jules: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?

Vincent: Naw, man, they got the metric system, they wouldn't know what the [heck] a Quarter Pounder is.

Jules: What do they call it?

Vincent: They call it a "Royale with Cheese".

Jules: "Royale with Cheese."

Vincent: That's right.

Although they both use a different versioning nomenclature, the PC and Mac versions of Microsoft Excel are essentially the same app -- except, as in the words of Vincent Vega, they're just "a little bit different." And one of these differences is their respective date systems. By default, Excel for the PC uses the 1900 date system, while its Mac counterpart uses the 1904 date system. In most cases, users won't notice this subtle difference. For example, a file saved by a PC version of Excel using the 1900 date system will be recognized as such when it's read by its Mac counterpart, and vice versa.

In February of last year I did a two-paragraph writeup on an interesting development in higher education, noting that Abilene Christian University was doling out iPhones and iPod touches to incoming first-year students. I didn't, at the time, have many details on the goals of the program or its implementation, I just gathered that there was a good deal of planning and thought behind the initiative. Little did I know that, over a year later, I'd be talking to the minds behind the program and finding out exactly how it went.

I recently got a chance to follow up with George Saltsman (Faculty Development), Scott Perkins (Director of Research) and William (Bill) Rankin (Director of Educational Innovation), meeting up for a multiparty video chat which revealed the excitement these guys have for what they are seeing become the platform for education: the iPhone. We talked for well over an hour, and their intensity and enthusiasm never dwindled. I got a great look at what they planned, how they did it, and how it turned out after the first year. Read on to see how the iPhone (and the iPod touch) has played a role in creating a new model for higher education at ACU.