iPhone iNatomy

My boyfriend, an uber-networked Congressional staffer, has fallen out of love with his Palm, and is counting the days until he can acquire a 3G iPhone. I'm trying to accept that I bought one half as good for twice the price a few months back. . . after all, I did enjoy the self-satisfied glow of the semi-early-adopter, fielding all kinds of covetous glances and inquiries from strangers on the Metro. ("No, it's not an iPod Touch.") But I can pass the techno-torch to the next generation gracefully. Maybe.

At least I can console myself with the wave of new third-party apps, many of which will work fine on my original iPhone. My staffer knew I'd like this one from Modality: it's basically a set of anatomy flashcards for the iPhone. The iPhone's glorious zoomability should make this app orders of magnitude better than the previous iPod edition, or pulp-based flashcards. And Netter's Atlas (on which this app is based) is beautifully illustrated.

Although I haven't had the chance to vet this product myself, it sounds perfect for students in human anatomy courses. I know from my experience teaching anatomy that the best way to learn the bones is to quiz yourself repeatedly; having flashcards loaded on your phone lets you do that while waiting for friends, on your commute, at lunch, etc. One may forget flashcards, but one's iPhone? Unlikely!

However, I'm torn about the idea of hyperlinks to Wikipedia. On the plus side, the links should provide all the supplemental information a student could ever need, while keeping the app itself simple. But although I use Wikipedia routinely, I am concerned about incorporating it directly into learning tools. It's not a textbook. I'm not bothered by the occasional inaccuracy in its pages - those are rapidly squashed by the user community - but I do have reservations about the overwhelming quantity of detail in the increasingly esoteric, comprehensive entries. Inexperienced readers may devote unnecessary effort to learning details (like alternative names for structures, or who discovered what in which year), but remain unable to extract and recall the key concepts. What better way to capture and learn the key concept than flashcards? But I fear that a student might find themselves clicking through to Wikipedia more than drilling their cranial bones* - which would be an unfortunate outcome indeed.

*apologies for the inadvertant reference to trepanation!