Removing the 'e' from 'e-learning'

the new iPod Touch

Now we can say iPod Touch: the teacher’s best friend! In my last post I wrote about all the ways I use my iPhone in the class room. It has certainly become a tool I would struggle to teach without.

At the school I was teaching in at the time we even altered policy documents and put notices in the newsletter to the effect that teachers would be seen regularly using their phones in class and meetings and this was ok – it was for professional purposes – they’re not text messaging or checking Facebook (hopefully!!).

The great news is that teachers no longer have to use their personal phone for classroom use. With the release of the new iPod Touch the game, and its many possibilities, has changed yet again. The great news is that the new iPod Touch does everything my old iPhone 3GS does and more. The more bit is that it is able to make ‘Facetime’ calls to anyone else on a wifi network, which for schools means instant communication with any other teacher that has the device from anywhere in the school. If you add the application ‘Fliq note’ to your iPod Touch, it will mean you can also send text messages to any other teacher as well.

The new iPod Touches are amazing devices, which is why I will most probably purchase one for each of my staff next year. Someone jokingly said to me that if I bought them iPads they’d love me even more. I disagree. The new iPod Touches are more functional than the iPad, in that you are equipping each staff member with a communication device, a camera, a HD video recorder (forget Flip Cams, they’re as good as dead), a portable video editor (they run a mobile version of iMovie), they’re own personal calendar, phone book, organiser etc etc etc. To even have dreamt of such a device 10 years ago would have been far fetched.

Can’t wait to get these into the hands of my staff, load up the Apps, and get the PDs going!

P.S. check them out here: http://www.apple.com/au/ipodtouch/

UPDATE: It’s come to light that Apple hasn’t blessed the iPod touch with the iPhone 4′s fantastic camera. For those wondering, it does not have a flash as the iPhone does, and is certainly not a 5 megapixel lens. In fact, the camera is less than 1 megapixel (basically a HD video camera that takes still shots), which is not as bad as you might think as the lens technology is still good, but it is a major disappointment.

The short of it is the rear camera shoots great HD video, but performs fairly ordinarily as a still camera especially in dimly lit situations. The front facing camera is only VGA quality.