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iTouch the Future…I Teach – Music

May 20, 2008
tags: , , , ,
by lthumann

We know that Christa McAuliffe was not referring to the iTouch when she made that famous statement during her training for the early 1986 shuttle mission to the moon. Technology had come so far and she was preparing to be the first teacher to set foot in space. It was an exciting time. Ms. McAuliffe’s words have stuck with me all these years that I’ve been teaching and I revisited many of the articles written about her as I was waiting for my 32 gig iTouch to arrive. 

I’ve been teaching a session called “iPods in Education” for the Center at Rutgers University now for about a year. I’ve brought it into many New Jersey school districts as well as they begin buying iPods for their teachers and utilizing the iPods that their students already have from home. I love it! There are so many things we can do to integrate iPods into the classroom.

We spend the day checking out Discovery Education, Mogopop, iWriter, iTunes, RSS, Google Reader, Bloglines, Flickr-Storm, and many other sites and applications. But I’ve noticed over the last couple of months that in each of my sessions, there’s at least one person that either has an iTouch or an iPhone and I was unsure as to ALL the differences except the obvious – how they looked and the access to wi-fi.

Pictured to the left is my white, 30 gig iPod Video Classic, which I love. To it’s right is my new, black, 32 gig iTouch. Each stores music, video, pictures, will sync with my Outlook contacts and will store information in the notes section. Theoretically both should allow me to attach a voLook at the difference in the thickness.ice recorder to record and store audio directly to the hardware, but my iTouch is not recognizing my Belkin TuneTalk Voice Recorder. Read here.

So…..there is an awful lot you can do with the iTouch that you can’t do with the Classic. Too much to write in one post, so I’ve decided to write a series, categorized by subject area. Since one of the teachers I worked with this year on podcasting and using iPods in the classroom happened to be a music teacher, I’ve decided to start with the category of music applications:

By the way, I used a Google Doc to compile my list of music apps and then narrowed down the list as I accessed the Doc from my iTouch to see what worked well and what didn’t.
Here are the apps in no specific order:

 

  • Piano Chord Dictionary
    http://www.mdmalin.com/webapps/piano/index.html - hold your iTouch sideways to select and see finger placement for a piano chord, turn it upright for help
  • Bearden’s Music Terms 
    http://www.beardensmusic.com/musicterms/ - The first screen is the alphabet – click on the letter that begins the term you are looking to define and it will navigate you to it
  • iPhone Lyrics
    http://www.iphonelyrics.com/ - The first screen is the alphabet – click on the letter that begins the name of the artist or group you are looking for and it will navigate to a list of their songs

Please leave a comment if you know of any others and I’ll add it to the Google Doc.

Next time – iTouch the Future…I Teach – Math 

from → CMSCE, iTouch
13 Comments leave one →
  1. Liz permalink
    May 20, 2008 7:22 pm

    Mmmmmmmmmm. It’s really embarrassing when I drool all over the keyboard.

    This post is getting bookmarked by me, and when I get my new i-Pod (no, I’m paying for it, grrrr), I will play, and play, and play. . . . .

    thanks, Lisa! You’ve done it again!

    Reply
  2. lthumann permalink*
    May 20, 2008 7:26 pm

    Liz – I started with music just for you – I knew you’d appreciate it.
    I hope to see you back at the Center in the fall.

    Lisa

    Reply
  3. Rob Usdin permalink
    June 11, 2008 9:39 am

    I’m thinking as far as the TuneTalk goes, that now that Apple announced the SDK and the app store, that support for that will come through apps. There’s already a hacked, custom built VOIP client and bluetooth dongle (for jailbroken iPhones and Touches), so a recording app for the Touch to work with the TuneTalk or maybe even a bluetooth headset can’t be far behind.

    –*Rob

    Reply
  4. lthumann permalink*
    June 16, 2008 4:28 pm

    Rob- Thanks for your comment.
    I spoke last week with a rep from Apple and he said that it is in the pipeline to be able to record to the iTouch, but didn’t have a date to give me as I really wanted to be able to let people know when they would have this ability.

    I also introduced the same rep to a runner who suggested they sell a probe attachment for the iTouch that would read the air temperature as when you are running you don’t have access to wi-fi.

    Lisa

    Reply
  5. Rob Usdin permalink
    August 7, 2008 9:42 am

    Lisa – Could not find an email address…but..regarding recording to the iPod Touch.

    If a TuneTalk or Griffin iTalk will record properly to an iPod Touch, using a recording app from the app store (of which there are many), it might be possible to get the file OFF the iPod Touch using iPocket – http://ericasadun.com/AppStore/iPocket/ – which lets you browse the file system of the iPod Touch.

    I’ve not tried it, I have no idea if the TuneTalk works with any of the recording apps, and if it did where the files would sit – but it looks promising. And believe me I’d love it if it did. I’m just waiting for someone else to confirm it will all work together.

    –*Rob

    Reply
  6. lthumann permalink*
    August 9, 2008 10:30 pm

    Rob – I have the Belkin and can not get it to work at all. But I’ll see if I can get my hands on a TuneTalk or a Griffin and try it with the iPocket app.
    Thanks for the tip.

    Lisa

    Reply
  7. sandrar permalink
    September 10, 2009 5:28 pm

    Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. :) Cheers! Sandra. R.

    Reply

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