Make your iPod Touch a Powerful Learning Gadget

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The iPod is indeed a very powerful multimedia device. Basically, the line of the iPod is designed to provide audio and video entertainment. Because of this, you need to consider the fact that some features that palms have will not exist on the iPod, which include running certain software to make your iPod a better learning Gadget.

The iPod can supercharge your learning. But it's often a matter of finding the right software and content. Below, we've listed several new pieces of software that will let you suck more educational media (DVDs, web videos, audio files, etc.) into your iPod. And we've also listed some important pieces of content that will make your iPod a better learning gadget. So here it goes:

1. Opening PowerPoint Presentation files
However, just like its predecessors, the iPod Touch will not have PowerPoint software which will enable you to open and view PowerPoint Presentations. But there are two ways on how you can view PowerPoint Presentation files in your iPod. Although you still won't be able to open .pps files, you will see that these two methods will be quite useful.

The first method is by exporting PowerPoint slides and saving it as image files. Import these image files in your iPod and you can create a slideshow using the image browser of iPod Touch. This can work but the voice over; music, animations and transitions that are often associated with PowerPoint Presentations will be lost.

The second method is by converting your PowerPoint Presentation files to MP4 video files. Today, there are quite a lot of software programs like Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter is available for purchase and download over the internet. Download from:
http:/www.ppt-to-video.com/powerpoint-to-video-overview.html
with it, you will be able to convert your PowerPoint Presentation files to MP4 video files and import the converted files to your iPod Touch. Because it will convert it to video, the audio, animations and transitions that are often integrated with PowerPoint Presentations will not be lost.
Tutorial with screenshots: http://www.ppt-to-video.com/support/knowledges/powerpoint-to-ipod.html

These are the things that you have to remember about iPod Touch. Although you can never really open PowerPoint Presentation files in your iPod Touch, you can still convert it to image files or video files which can be just as effective in presenting slideshows.

2. Put Wikipedia on Your Ipod: Encyclopodia is a free piece of software that brings Wikipedia to the iPod. Encyclopodia can be installed on iPod generations 1 through 4, as well as iPod Minis. Definitely worth a try.

3. Watch DVDs on Your iPod: Like handbrake, it can rip most of DVDs to iPod video format, but it cannot deal with protected DVDs, we must seek another program for help. You can try Wondershare DVD to iPod ripper (http://www.dvd-ripper-copy.com/dvd-to-iPod.html) which works well on both Windows and Mac OS.

4. Load Limewire music, YouTube Videos to Your iPod: Limewire is a download tool I assume lot of us use. I often use it to download free music and videos and put them on my iPod. I also often visit YouTube to watch videos and sometimes I download videos from YouTube to put on my iPod. http://www.iskysoft.com/article/dvd-ipod.html
you only need to follow this guide to Load Limewire music, YouTube Videos to Your iPod.

5. Make Other Video Formats iPod-Ready: Turn a wide range of video formats into the one video format (MPEG-4) that your iPod likes.

6. Convert MP3 files into One Big iPod Audiobook File

7. Create eBooks for the iPod: This bit of software turns text files into ebooks that you can read on your iPod. After you load a text file, it will make the text readable through iPod Notes (which you can find under “Extra Setttings”).

8. Record Web Audio and Move it To Your iPod: iRecordMusic enables you to easily record audio from web pages and Internet radio streams. So if you’re surfing the web and find a good piece of streamed audio, it lets you record it and then transfer the media to your iPod.

9. Get a Civic Education on Your iPod

10. Load Maps onto Your iPod: If you travel to New York City, Paris, Berlin or Moscow, how will you find your way to the museums? Download subway maps from 24 major cities across the globe from iSubwayMaps. You’ll only need an iPod with photo capability and you’ll be good to go.

11. Study Foreign Languages, Take University Courses, and Listen to AudioBooks on Your iPod - All for Free: Ok, so this is a cheap but worthwhile plug for some of our richest podcast collections.

Any other good ideas, please list out in the comment!