Painting With Time

iPad

Teaches: science, time

CTR Rating: 90%

CTR Review

See also Painting With Time Climate Change Edition. Helping a child understand long term temporal relationships -- things like how a plant grows or how a glacier retreats -- has always been a challenge for a parent, librarian or teacher. Now there's an app for that, and it works. Featuring a very basic design, Painting With Time (called "Paint With Time" in the app store) exemplifies how you can leverage the power of a multi-touch screen to make an abstract concept -- in this case time -- have meaning. A gallery containing 14 pictures includes such things as A Messy Room (showing how a child's playroom gets messy over just a few days), Growing a Beard (over 30 days), "Spring Comes to Boston" and "A Glacier Retreats." You start by seeing a picture. Using options on the side of the screen, you can quickly jump between different units of time. In the case of a beard, the options are 10 day intervals. A slice option lets you divide the scene into different views, so you can mix and match the times. This app is part of a larger long term NSF initiative designed to expand the general public's notion of time relationships. It was created by Red Hill Studios, which has also produced a two-hour documentary called Exploring Time and a traveling museum exhibition called Playing with Time. Other timelapse movie content is at www.exploringtime.org. Perhaps the best part -- the app is free.