When walking through a city that is new to me or even my home town, I wonder what that location used to look like. I wonder what the history took place at that location, if a battle was fought there or if a grand building stood there.
History Here is an award winning app that provides historic information about locations across the United States. When the app is open, the information about the location can vary from architecture to museums to famous homes and people.
When I opened the app at College Park, I learned some new and interesting facts that I probably would not have known otherwise. For example, the College Park Airport is the world’s longest continuously operating airport and that it was home to the first U.S. Postal Air Mail Service.
The Museum of London has an app called Streetmuseum that is similar to History Here. Streetmuseum gives users history about their location but it also overlays a picture of the location in the past when the user holds their phone to the street. This provides tourist or locals in London the chance to learn more about the history of London in an interactive manner.
Location based apps that provide a look into the past could change how students learn history. According to the National Training Laboratories in Betel, Maine, students only remember 5% of what they hear in lecture but when they are actively engaged this percentage increases drastically. These apps could drastically increase students chances of remembering the information about the history since they would be actively engaged in learning the information instead of sitting in a lecture hall.
While they can increase the chance that a student will learn the information, they also provide the chance for the public to learn more about their surroundings without having to go to a museum or having a tour guide in a new city. These apps may also help to expose tourists to the culture of a location since they are able to see major events in the past that shaped the location. I personally know that I won’t forget the information that I have already learned using these apps since I learned the information using my location.