As a result of my daughter insisting on getting an iPod, I also got one for myself. The 80 GB video iPod is an incredible device(http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/). So far I have used it to follow great podcasts like the one by David Pogue (http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/) or the News from Lake Wobegon (http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/) both of which are conveniently available through iTunes.

These products, iPod, iTunes and the great podcasts make air travel much more tolerable, and make the time fly faster when taking a train. They must also have applications in education.

So I started experimenting, and found out that lectures presented as PowerPoint slide shows work pretty well as podcasts. I was able to read 24 pt fonts well enough. Mathematical formulae produced using MathType (with 24 pt fonts) did not convert well in my experiments.

I converted flash to MP4 using Sothink converter. Audio suffered a lot in the conversion - something must be done about that. Anyway, this seems very promising, and I already see a future for myself in editing and creating calculus podcasts. Once I get the registrations numbers for the programs that I used, I will produce publishable versions of my podcasts. Now they cannot be published, since every slide has an ugly bar over it (reminding me to buy the product).
I cannot wait to see what one could do with the iPod touch. Perhaps we can make educational podcasts interactive? That is certainly coming soon.

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