[Note: The video at the bottom of this post begins playing automatically. You may wish to scroll down and pause it. The video does not show up at all on an Apple iDevice.]
A priceless fringe benefit of my job is regular travel through incredibly scenic terrain. I spent most of the past week working on the magnificent north end of Vancouver Island, in the communities of Port Hardy, Port Alice, and Port McNeill. While working on the ‘North Island’, I always stay at a delightful waterfront B & B, aptly named ‘At Water’s Edge‘ in Port McNeill. This week, my hosts Chris and Karen Stewart made sure I was aware of an iPad app that shows off some of the area’s spectacular natural beauty.
The Nimmo Bay Helicopter Fishing and Wilderness Adventures app for iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch was produced by the proprietors of the Nimmo Bay Lodge, which is situated on the mainland BC coast, across the Broughton and Queen Charlotte straits from Port McNeill.
The app offers an interactive 360° helicopter’s-eye view of the region’s breath-taking natural beauty. By interactive, I mean that the user can zoom in or out to adjust the field of vision as the helicopter travels. Or, the viewer can choose where to look–ahead, behind or to the side. The video is made possible by technology developed by immersive media.
immersive media has developed a low-cost ($1.99) iOS app called im360 for showcasing and sharing its interactive video. After the initial purchase, a great deal of free content can be downloaded to the device from within the app. I believe the potential for engaging learners in classrooms with some of this content is tremendous. There are helicopter tours over cities and other landmarks, as well as land-based videos of museums, parks, wildlife, sports, arts, and more. It would work well to use a data projector to share some of these videos in classrooms.
I have embedded below the video version of Nimmo 360. You can interact with the video by clicking your cursor on the video and dragging. At the conclusion of the video, if you click on ‘Find More Videos’, you will be directed to the free content that is available to be viewed within the im360 app.
On a side note, the delightful musical accompaniment for the video is Leonard Cohen’s ‘Halelujah‘, sung by the Canadian Tenors. It so happens that Clifton Murray of the Canadian Tenors is also part of the Murray family who are the proprietors of Nimmo Bay Lodge.
