iPods in Education: Create iPod Quiz Quizzes for "iPod Quiz" on iPod (for Quizzing)

Submitted by mott on December 2, 2007 - 19:10

The ubiquitous iPod and iTunes are excellent tools for education by allowing students to access educational content, in a variety of formats and learning styles, whenever and wherever they need it.

Surprisingly enough, the iPod is more than just another technology allowing the young to ignore the cynical world of the adults around them.

If we chose to use them, in one sturdy portable device that many students own already, users have access to:

podcasts
videocasts
screencasts
movies
music
images
spoken word
text files
stored files
and, perhaps suffering from the least educational respect, the much-maligned game

Like the cell phone, the iPod may be the most intrinsically beneficial, economically efficient, and educationally demonized asset that educators blindly refuse to use. The school boards will probably have the committees struck to investigate developing iPod-friendly curricula just in time to be obsolete and when we've started implanting holographic Apple smell-o-Pods into our various body orifices.

In any event, iPods come with numerous games, many of which have been shown to have benefits. Tetris, Sudoku, Poker, and Phase would seem to have self-evident skills-training advantages. However, in case further convincing is needed that something enjoyable can be healthful, there are many studies on the benefits of computer games:

And the list goes on... let your Google Search skills go wild on:

...but don't believe everything you read.

In any case, if the research doesn't convince you, just do it for your contrarian Nike propaganda-fed inner-rebel.

A fairly conservative entry-point - gently dipping your toes into the iPod game waters, so-to-speak - would be to download a free application called iQuiz Maker by Aspyr (makers of The Sims).

Now, before going wild there are a few important tips to using this application, at least in Leopard and with the latest iTunes (version 7.5 as of twelve seconds ago). First, for some unknown reason, you cannot download iQuz from the Aspyr site using Safari. Instead, use Firefox. If you're feeling brave, try Firefox 3 (version Beta 1 at the time of writing: remember, you're letting your inner-rebel out).

Once you have iQuiz Maker installed, there is a helpful manual under, surprisingly enough, the "Help" menu.

Creating the quizzes is not particularly difficult, but the trick came in syncing to the iPod. In theory, the application syncs the customized quizzes automatically once you launch iTunes. (Note: Make sure your iPod is set to sync automatically for the transfer of quizzes to work). Unfortunately, if you have a later model iPod you have to do some manual shifting of files because Apple changed the name of the folder for the updated iQuiz (v. 2). Don't worry, it's easy.

Navigate to your iTunes folder. (Usually: Home -> Music -> iTunes)

There you will find a folder called "iPod Games", in which you will find all your games. iQuiz Maker automatically saves your quizzes to the "iQuiz 1.0" folder. Simply drag your quizzes from that folder into "iPod Quiz". Et voila, upon next sync your games will be available as an option from within the "New Game" button in iPod Quiz.

(Of course, if you have the original iPod Quiz, you can skip this step. Your quizzes should automatically sync.

Always remember, as Bill always said, "The play's the thing!"

Resources:

Further instructions from the Apple page below: