Thing #6

After watching students text one another on their cell phones before school each morning, I became convinced that they would be able to use an iPod Touch in the classroom without the issues that people my age feel there are. I have had a "Touch" for a few months now. I have become a big fan of some of the games like Word Warp, Brain Thaw, PopMath lite and more. I think kids will play them as well. I also use it to check the weather and I use the calculator. I also use it to check some websites often. It is fairly easy. You can have up to 8 pages open at one time, so the pages I check frequently I keep those "stored" and just refresh when I reconnect. If you want to read a page and don't have wireless at home, you can open it and it will be there later. It is easy to enlarge and flip the page to read. However, I must admit that I don't like to use it for extensive reading of webpages. It really helps that Google has an app so the page is the correct width. It is also easy to record on the Touch. I can see students podcasting on it quite easily. I wish the Touch had a camera. That would really be a useful tool. I hear it is coming on the next version.

I would also recommend Tony Vincent's site - Learning in Hand. He has been using Palms in the classroom for years and has info and ideas for iPod Touch also.

As for Wikipedia, I must admit that I use it frequently. I have often thought about contributing but never has. Yes, the information on what it is not, is interesting.