I am thrilled that one of the items I’m receiving for this holiday season is an iPod Touch. Since I found out, I have been quite distracted imagining how my new toy can be a force for good in my research (productivity enhancing) rather than a pure time waster (productivity killing).

I already have a bunch of classes that I am working through in iTunes U, but the iPod Touch adds new possibilities for technologically-assisted learning: namely, apps. I would like to send out a request to iPod Touch/iPhone academics to send their favorite apps. I’m interested in anything related to biblical studies, Christian origins, classics, Roman history, etc., as well as language learning, especially German and/or French (though anything neat with Hebrew or or Latin or Greek to practice). And with German/French, not just the cheesy learn-how-to-order-pancakes conversational vocab flashcard apps, but something that will go through verb conjugations and more robust vocab building (perhaps even being able to add your own lists of, say, theological terms).

I have noticed that some bibliobloggers have discussed the iPhone/iPod Touch and apps: Chris Brady, Michael Whitenton, Rick Mansfield (his old blog’s location, mostly on OliveTree), Karyn Traphagen. These are a few apps that I gather may be helpful (though I haven’t tested them yet):

• Bible: OliveTree BibleReader, Logos, YouVersion
• Bible Reference: Carta Bible Atlas [Update: It calls itself the "Carta Bible Atlas" but it looks like it is Carta's Compact Bible Atlas - 2000 Jubilee Edition.]
• Greek: Lexiphanes (complete LSJ and Autenrieth’s Homeric Lexicon); GreekGrams; GreekFlash
• Hebrew: HebrewFlash
• Latin: Lexidium (Lewis and Short, parsing, Roman numeral converter); iStudy Latin Verbs (flash cards); Latin-English Translation Dictionary by Ultralingua (apparently not as good as other Ultralingua titles)
• German: Oxford German Dictionary (looks like you can make flash cards and has a morphology feature, in addition to 120,000 definitions and audio pronunciation); Collins Pro German-English Translation Dictionary (automatic recognition of inflected forms); Byki German (Owners of the Byki Deluxe software can create their own German study lists on their Mac or PC and download them to their iPhone/iPod Touch app); Words — German (word game with German words)
• French: French-English Translation Dictionary by Ultralingua; Words — French (word game with German words)
• Classical Literature: Plato’s Complete Works (public domain English translation); Aristotle’s Complete Works (public domain English translation); Julius Caesar’s Complete Works (public domain English translation)
• Reading eBooks: Stanza, Amazon Kindle
• Life Organizing: Things
• Document Organizing: Documents To Go; Quickword or Quickoffice; Files or Files Lite (helpful for PDF organizing and viewing); Dropbox; Evernote

If you have comments on how these apps have been for you or other apps that you’d suggest as well, please let us know in the comments! App recommendations that are productivity killing, but still fun, are welcome too.