Arnhem - Battlefield Tour App for iPhone

Whilst I have to admit to never having actually been on a battlefield tour proper – I have visited some cemeteries in the Somme and visited parts of Northern France – I’ve even visited Arnhem (for a purely social reason) and pretty much squandered my opportunity even though I did wander over the bridge taking in the local sights. The ability to quickly grab a leaflet/book that has a brief explanation and fuller text, images etc for later perusal is always something I’ve looked for but never quite seen the answer and whilst I recognise there are text books they always seem too expensive and not quite what I want and I suspect the younger generation aren’t too interested in reference books either.

I realise this App isn’t meant as a standalone educational tool but with two small boys, one who is besotted with all things green and one who actually went to Arnhem and is now studying WW2 at school, I thought this App would hit their sweet spot with its mixture of youth friendly tech and a subject that is close to both their hearts, so to assist me review this I enlisted my 8 and a 10 year old sons.

With the kids snapping around my heels keen to starting playing with the app I download the apps and synced then onto a pair of 4G iTouches. This wasn’t without some snags but I can report these seem to have been all of my own making and after IOS5 was released we suffered further snags but this was definitely Apple’s fault. This has now been resolved and the Apps appear to work seamlessly on IOS5.

So, to the app itself. It is as you would expect very intuitive, neither of my boys needed any help in navigating around. Clearly using just iTouches and not being in Arnhem we couldn’t get the full location/context experience that you would with a GPS enabled Apple device but that aside we could navigate around a map which has a number of locations marked, all of which trigger audio and visual cues to explain the events relating to Op Market Garden. You can equally simply browse the accompanying text, images and video in any order you like. So for example you could wander about Arnhem and click on items in a structured sequence, or sit in a café and read in more detail at your own leisure. Similarly you could do this on the way to the location.

The content of this app is not too over powering, there was enough text to give my boys the full story and a lot more insight than they have received from school texts, the photographs really stirred their imagination and the inclusion of videos totally blew them away. In particular my eldest could relate the location he played football in to its actual wartime site of glider landings and that really made him think. Quite a powerful tool, and this really is the beauty of this apps concept you are only limited by the amount of data/media the developers have included and as devices (even Apple) start to have greater memory then the amount of accompanying media can be increased which will only be a bonus.

In the absence of any similar apps to compare it against I have to say I think it’s a cracking concept, well executed, definitely more commercially sensible than the audio tours/booklets you get at museums and the like and something that caught the imagination of my children. I can really see this taking off not just for battlefield tours but for other historic/tourist sights and the scope for licensing/partnerships with people must be exceptional.

The boys and I give this app a full 5 tattie heads and look forward to further offerings – perhaps our very own ARRSE tourguides could develop one in conjunction with these fine people? I sense an opportunity for H4H!

A2_Matelot



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