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Hello Deeptimers,
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In May of last year I was awarded an Innovation in Scholarship Grant to produce the first in a series of Big History-themed smartphone apps. I wanted to try and do something different and ended up inventing a whole new kind of app; one that provides accurate educational content, but also taps into the truly transformative ideas embedded within the cosmic narrative.

Instead of another utility app that lets you know when the next bus will arrive, or a game to puzzle over virtual candy combos, I wanted to design an app experience that would tell the stories of cosmic evolution in provocative new ways. I also wanted it to deliver something you couldn’t get from a textbook, so it had to be both intellectually disruptive, and experiential. Thus, a new app concept was born. An “Epiphany App” is an educational app that delivers at least one paradigm-shifting realization as part of the experience.

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The concept of a disruptive epiphany dovetails nicely with the subject of my ongoing PhD research on transformative learning in Big History. I assembled some of the most compelling ideas to emerge from the Big History narrative and thought about how I could turn them into rich experiences. As far as making them transformative, I drew on preliminary research results with my own students, and for more personal inspiration, all I had to do was recall the many moments of awe and connection that I have felt in my own engagement with the story of the universe.

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In order for this app to deliver the goods, it has to provide a profound and personally meaningful experience. The good news is Big History is full of genuinely mind-shifting moments. Starting at the beginning, I decided this first app should deal with an early threshold of cosmic evolution so I chose the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CBR). The challenge was how to make the CBR both a lived-experience, and a personally meaningful one.
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Cosmosis1 takes users on a journey to visualize the world as revealed through five different wavelengths of light. Using embedded guidance videos and interactive visualizations, I show learners real-time simulations of the world through X-ray, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and finally, microwave light. The experience culminates when a powerful piece of evidence in cosmic evolution, the Cosmic Background Radiation, is revealed where it actually is; NOT just on a flat computer screen, but in the sky as would be seen from anywhere on earth. The app places the CBR image into the background of the phone’s camera viewer, as if the viewer were at the center of a sphere of cosmic background microwave radiation (in other words, as it really is!). But more than just making it real, the experience then makes the CBR personally meaningful. The idea of Cosmosis1 is to bring an abstract scientific concept into the phenomenological realm – in other words, to provide a lived-experience upon which users can build more sophisticated conceptual knowledge. This is accomplished using science, imagination, and Deweyan constructivist learning theory. I apply a synthesis of concepts and techniques, developed through my research, that I call radical hermeneutics. I published the educational theory behind the app in the International Journal of Immersive Education in June 2013.
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Here is a little clip of one of the embedded guidance videos but to get the full-experience, you’ll just have to try the app for yourself.
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The complete Cosmosis Epiphany App Series is designed to enhance high school and college-level courses. In the future there will be one app for each week of a Big History course, following the chronology of cosmic evolution. Each threshold of cosmic evolution provides a basis for a different educational epiphany. Alternatively, each individual app can also supplement existing courses in physics, astronomy, biology, etc. The apps should also appeal in informal formal educational contexts. In any case, all Cosmosis Epiphany Apps will encourage users to get outside to experience nature and culture in new ways.
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The Cosmosis1 App will be free for educational use and available to the public through iTunes for a small fee. The first release is for iPhones only, but will be available for Android and tablets as soon funding becomes available. Rich will be releasing a limited number of prototype versions the first week in June and is now recruiting beta testers. If you wish to be a beta tester please use the contact form on the website provided.
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The Competitive Grants Scheme at Macquarie University where I am enrolled has funded the Cosmosis1 CBR app. Funding for future thresholds is currently being sought. I have been working with Fred Adam from ubik2.com as the Artistic Director and his team of programmers in Spain.
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More information can be found at http://cosmosis.omniscopic.com/
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Any comments right here on this forum would be greatly appreciated!

Warm regards,
Rich Blundell
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PS- I’ll be manning a poster at the IBHA conference at Dominican University in August if anyone wants to meet in person and give the app a spin.