Merriam-Webster recently joined forces with ParagonSoftware Group, a leading software developer and content provider for mobile devices and desktop PCs, to bring the eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary to iPhone users. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary for iPhone is now available at the App Store. The program is supported by iPhones with firmware 2.0, iPhone 3G and iPod touch with firmware 2.0.

The dictionary’s database contains 225,000 entries, including more than 10,000 new words and definitions, which can be accessed anywhere, any time, without Internet connection or additional charges. The new app features an easy-to-use, single-click application for instant access to all words and definitions. The SlovoEd engine compresses the database to a minimum of memory space while allowing users to quickly perform multiple lookups.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition for iPhone has a suggested retail price of $24.99 USD and may be ordered at http://www.merriam-webster.com/store/iphone/collegiate/.

Find more information at PRNewwire.

TUAW posted an interesting update today about Stanford University’s fall iPhone programming course. The course is obviously in full swing, with a reported 80 students signed up. Stanford has also started a project that is beginning to bear fruit in the form of iPhone and iPod touch apps—the Stanford iApps Project.

TUAW reports that five student-developed apps are now being tested as part of the Stanford iApps Project. Two of the apps are targeted at Stanford students and provide management of course registration and bills, while the other three apps are aimed at a much larger audience including the general public and alumni.

These other apps give access to a searchable Stanford University map (see screenshot), schedules and scores for the University’s sports teams, and listings in the StanfordWho online directory.

While future iApps may be the result of the iPhone development course, these apps were developed by TerriblyClever Design. a startup created by Kayvon Beykpour, a Stanford computer science undergrad. Once the Stanford apps are out of beta testing, they’ll be available in the App Store.

For more, check out the full article at TUAW.

We were awfully pleased to hear about Apple’s new Developer University Program for the iPhone and iPod touch. Targeted at university developers interested in creating native apps for Apple’s devices, the program is open to colleges and universities in the US only at this time.

To apply for membership (yep, you gotta apply),  you’ll need an Apple ID (either an existing iPhone developer ID, an ADC ID, or even your iTunes ID) and you’ll need to be able to link your request to a specific course. Applications developed under the program can be distributed either at Apple’s app store or on-site at the university via Apple’s “ad hoc” distribution model. Of course, the program also “allows students within the same development team to share their applications with each other through email, or by posting them to a private website for presentation and grading purposes,” which should make teachers’ and students’ lives a bit easier.

We’re looking forward to seeing a whole new crop of educational applications show up in the apps store, and we hope they’ll get beyond the unquestionably handy but fairly tame collection of memory and language apps that currently make up the majority of educational apps…. A cool interactive chemistry app that triggers the “vibrate” function for haptic feedback to denote an explosion if you mix the wrong chemicals? A grammar app that uses the accelerometer to let students shake to diagram a sentence? Man, oh man… The options are endless!

This week Thumbplay, an online platform of mobile entertainment content, expanded their services to allow users to download reference materials and study aids like CliffsNotes and American Heritage Dictionaries and titles from Scientific American Magazine and the Sierra Club from their cell phones.

The new titles span a wide variety of classes and disciplines including:

• Language and grammar aids: 100 Words Almost Everyone Confuses & Misuses, 100 Words Every High School Freshman Should Know, 100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know, 100 Words To Make You Sound Smart
• Literature: CliffsNotes for classic works, including Beowulf,The Canterbury Tales, Great Expectations and Julius Caesar
• History: Great American History Fact Finder
• Science: Scientific American: Ask The Experts, Scientific, American: Geography, Scientific American: The Human Body, 100 Words Science Words Every College Graduate Should Know
• Mathematics: Scientific American: Mathematical Games

“With nearly 85 percent of the U.S. population using cell phones, we’re seeing an increasing demand for ever more engaging and useful content,” said Are Traasdahl, Thumbplay’s CEO and founder. “We’re thrilled to add these applications to our ever-expanding content library.”

Apple unveiled three new iPod touch models during its “Let’s Rock” event, all of which are available today. For $229 you can receive 8GB of storage, for $299 you’ll get 16GB, and $399 scores 32GB. That’s knocking $70 to $100 off the price of each.

The new touch body is very slightly thinner, and has a similar tapered back as the iPhone 3G. It will also include an exterior volume control and a built-in speaker for “casual listening.” There is no microphone built in, but the touch will work with new Apple headphones that include a microphone on the cord. This new feature could prove handy for teaching and learning. I can foresee students and teachers creating and sharing educational podcasts, playing and recording lecture notes, etc. from the palm of their hands.

For more details, check out iPhone Atlas’ coverage of the “Let’s Rock” event.

As you likely already know, The New York Times recently published an article entitled “Welcome, Freshmen. Have an iPod,” which provides an overview of the debate sparked by Abilene Christian University and three other universities planning to distribute iPhones to some or all of their students this fall. The article gives voice to both the advocates and skeptics of the mobile learning strategy.

While plans to distribute the devices worry some professors, who suggest students are less likely to participate in classes if they are multitasking, many schools emphasize both the iPhone’s educational usefulness and the inevitability of the movement toward the use of mobile technology in education.

If you’re interested in the conversation (which is highly likely if you’re on this page), this article is worth checking out.

A significant step toward full iPhone copy/paste functionality was taken today as independent developer Zac White recently unveiled his open-source solution: OpenClip, a standard for other iPhone application developers.

As iPhone Atlas reports, OpenClip is not a standalone app but rather a technology that developers can incorporate into their iPhone applications should they choose to participate. No applications yet support OpenClip, but it’s coming soon for the American Heritage Dictionary and Roget’s Thesaurus applications, Twitter client Twittelator, notepad application MagicPad, finance lexicon Wall Street Worlds, and a number of others.

iPhone Atlas goes on to report that iPhone users will be able to copy and paste from one OpenClip application to the next, but not to developer applications that aren’t participating or to Apple’s own iPhone apps, such as its e-mail client or the Safari browser.

Apple has, of course, acknowledged that copy-paste functionality will be officially coming to the iPhone, eventually, and OpenClip’s creator has recognized Apple’s plan.

“Instead of just waiting on the sidelines, we wanted to help iPhone users and Apple by being proactive and trying to help with a solution,” the site’s FAQ reads. “While just an interim fix until Apple adopts a systemwide version, OpenClip hopes to add to the iPhone user experience and provide a working case study for Apple, hopefully allowing (company engineers) to roll out their version more quickly.”

This past Friday, MiGhtyDocs released an app that makes viewing Google Docs on the iPhone a bit easier. The app enables you to keep your important documents with you at all times, even without an Internet connection.

All you have to do is open your document once on your iPhone, and MiGhtyDocs caches it for offline viewing. Unfortunately, the application doesn’t allow you to edit docs or view spreadsheets or presentations. As TUAW suggests, the app does one thing very well—plus, it’s free.

For more, check out TUAW’s post on MiGhtyDocs or download the app from the iTunes App Store.

Here’s another iPhone app that might be useful for teaching and learning: iPhone Atlas recently reported the release of Google’s new Translation service for iPhone users.  The Google Translate mobile service works almost exactly like the desktop version. Simply type in a word or phrase, select the language you wish to translate and hit ‘Translate’. It deciphers both single words and entire phrases from 24 different languages including Chinese, French and Japanese.

The app works using the iPhone’s Safari browser, which means that you need a data connection to use the service. But once you’ve searched for a word or phrase, it’s stored in the iPhone’s memory and can be accessed again without a data connection.

If you want to try it out for yourself go to http://google.com on your iPhone, click on ‘More’ in the menu and then on ‘Translate’.

Today, TUAW posted an excellent list of research tools specifically for Mac users as part of their Back to School series, which provides tips and reviews for students, parents and teachers. Their extensive list of desktop tools that provide fast and intuitive means of navigating and collecting information begins with Pathway.

• Pathway creates “webs” of pages, allowing you to map your trail through the wiki’s articles. You start with a search, and the search result creates the center node of the map. Satellite links are created from the table of contents for the page, and following any of them creates a new node, linked to the originating page and with its own satellite links.

• The next tool introduced is Selenium, which combines a browser, a PDF manager (with annotation capabilities), an outliner, a Cocoa rich text editor, and bibliography manager.

• The final research tool presented by TUAW is DEVONagent. This tool is a “whiz” at scouring general and specialized online sources, providing intelligent summaries with multiple methods of viewing and navigation. You can see ranked keywords from the search results and a map, which shows how they relate.

Be sure to visit TUAW’s full article, which goes on to discuss tool for citing sources in a bibliography and in-text.