iTunes Account Without a Credit Card

An iTunes account is required to download iPhone/iPod touch applications from the App Store. When you create an account, iTunes asks you for a credit card number to keep on file for purchases. When using iPods in schools, teachers probably don't want to use their personal credit card and schools usually do not have a credit card that can be used for iTunes. Fortunately, there is a way to create a new iTunes account without giving financial information. Here's how:

1. Open iTunes and go to the iTunes Store. Then click to go to the App Store.
2. Sign out of any iTunes account you might already be signed in with. (Do this by clicking your email address in the top-right corner of the iTunes window. Click the Sign Out button in the dialog box that appears.)
3. Go to the details page of any free app. Click the Get App button.
4. Click the Create New Account button and complete the registration.
   
5. When asked to select a credit card, choose None.
   
   
6. iTunes tells you that you will be asked to provide a payment method when you make your first purchase.

I suggest adding money to the new iTunes account through gift cards. This way when you want to purchase a paid app, you still won't be required to give a credit card number.

It's important to note that iTunes will not provide None as a choice for Credit Card unless you create an account by first downloading a free app. The good news is that you only have to do this once, and you can sign into to this account on up to five computers.

Apple IIGS vs. iPhone 3G S

Apple's newest handheld, iPhone 3G S, is for sale this month. I thought it would be interesting to compare iPhone 3G S with one of Apple's desktop computers from 20 years ago, Apple IIGS. The "GS" in IIGS stood for graphics and sound. However, it's clear that today's iPhone is much better with graphics and sound. The "S" in 3G S stands for speed. Compared to IIGS, 3G S certainly is the speedier computer. The similarities of these two computing devices pretty much stop at their names.

I think the most telling fact above is the number of software applications. The Apple IIGS could run software written for Apple II machines, which were produced for 17 years. iPhone was just opened up to programmers in 2008 and there are there are already 5 times as many apps as compared to what was available for Apple II computers. The number of iPhone/iPod touch apps is set to double by year's end.

The bottom line: you can do a lot more with an iPhone/iPod touch than you could ever do with a IIGS. Sure, it's wonderful that iPhone can access the Internet 50 times faster, has 250 times more RAM and runs at 214 times the megahertz. But really, it's about the usefulness of the computer, and with 50,000+ apps, iPhone is certainly useful.

Apple IIgs photo from flickr.com/photos/quagmirez31/3547583644

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Tip for Moving Icons on an iPhone or iPod touch Home Screen

If you watched my Ustream.tv workshop last month, you heard about my frustration with organizing my eight pages of apps on my iPod touch's Home screen. Dragging icons from page to page is time consuming and frustrating.

I came across a video on YouTube that gives great advice for my problem: iPhone Tip: Organizing All Those Apps. The video shows how to use the dock at the bottom of the Home screen to move up to four icons at a time. It's quite a clever trick!

Picks from the App Store, April 2009

I hosted "Picks from the App Store" on Ustream.tv on April 29, 2009. The broadcast was recorded live and you are certainly welcome to watch the archive version below or at ustream.tv/recorded/1445088.

The best part about the broadcast was the associated chatroom. Unfortunately, the chatroom was not archived with the video. During the hour-long workshop, I demonstrated and talked about a variety of apps. Here are the App Store links:

Lemonade Stand Oregon Trail Dictionary Word Warp MadLibs Nonsense Lite

Comic Touch Star Walk Airport Mania Flight Control iClean

In addition, after the show I learned that you can indeed search within the iTunes Store for only free apps. After initiating a search, click Power Search and select Applications. You'll see a checkbox that says Search for free applications.

Note: Unfortunately, the recording did not pick up the audio or video from David's call--another reason to watch live.

Web Directories for Apps

Whether you're browsing in iTunes on your desktop or in the mobile App Store on your iPod touch/iPhone, you can get lost in more than 35,000 apps. But, you should know that iTunes isn't the only place to find apps to download. Let me tell you about three websites that offer alternative ways to sort through all those apps. Although these are websites outside of iTunes, when you find an app to download, they link to the details page in iTunes so you can download the app.

Mobclix keeps detailed data about the App Store. I like that it allows filtering apps by category and price. This way I can narrow my browsing and searching to free apps in the Education category. I can sort the results by rank, average rating, or release date.

AppShopper also makes it easy to browse by category and free vs. paid. You can also browse just new apps. Unfortunately, AppShopper's search option can't be limited to just free apps.

Educational Apps Review has video reviews of a couple dozen apps. The growing number of reviews are tagged by grade level and subject. Simply click on the tags on the left side of the page to see the reviews. The site is run by educators and they are organizing a community around the site with a Ning and a wiki.

You can access these sites on your desktop computer or in mobile Safari. When using mobile Safari, the download links actually launch the mobile App Store where you can download and install the app. (Unfortunately, Educational Apps Review's videos won't play in mobile Safari.)

Last week the billionth app was downloaded from the App Store. Apple recently said they have sold 37 million iPhones and iPod touches. That means that there has been an average of 27 apps downloaded for each device sold. That number will only increase as the App Store gets more and better apps. Next time you want to browse and search for apps, I highly suggest visiting the online app directories above--you just might find your next favorite app!

iPod Activity and Lesson Ideas

You can read about how 20 classes at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School in Florida are using iPods in the newspaper article iPods Hit the Books: Elementary School Embraces the Media Player as Learning Tool. Some of the activities the article mentions include:

• fourth graders watch a video about the sun's layers
• third graders play podcasts about solving math problems
• first graders record video book reviews
• the principal delivers message and training resources to teachers
• students work at their own pace by pausing, rewinding, and rewatching math podcasts
• students are allowed to take home the iPods to do homework
• teachers use iPod to facilitate parent-teacher conferences

If you're looking for more ideas for using iPods in the classroom, click on over to the Apple Learning Interchange. The Learning Interchange has many resources for teachers that are made by teachers, including lesson plans that use iPods and iTunes. Some of the lesson ideas include:

• Learning Math with Music: Students work in groups to create their own rhymes and songs for an entire family of math facts. Individual students record their songs using an attachable microphone.
• Radio Show: After reading and listening to several radio dramas, student groups write and record a radio drama based on an event or period in history.
• iPod Reporters: Students explore the basics of news reporting and gain an understanding of why news is news and what their responsibilities are as news gatherers. Students then plan a class newspaper.
• Reading Fluency with iPods and GarageBand: The goal of this lesson is to develop stronger reading fluency and comprehension, and increase language acquisition skills: Using an iPod and a voice recorder.
• The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Students download and watch videos from United Streaming on iPods. Similarly, check out All Quiet on the Western Front.
• Oral Histories: After a discussion on what it means to be an American, students use an iPod and a voice recorder to interview a family member. They then combine the interview with old photos of that relative in iMovie, and create a short video history about that person.
• Digital Science Experiments:This lesson can be applied to any science experiment. The teacher uses an iPod and a voice recorder to provide experiment instructions to small groups of students.
• Listening to Letter Sounds: Sounds and their corresponding symbols are taught in a series of lessons using various strategies and aided by Lively Letter cards.

Apple's Learning Interchange has a search box where you can specify resources that are tagged iPod and allows you to specify grade levels and academic levels. You just might discover a really cool lesson idea!

For more about iPods and learning, go to Learning in Hand's iPods section.

90-Minutes About Podcasting & iPods

Last month I co-presented a webinar about podcasting and handhelds for the Texas High School Project. It was recorded and is archived on the THSP Webinar Series page. The best part of the 90-minute webinar is when Marcy Voss and fellow teachers at the Boerne ISD talk about their iPod project. They discuss the logistics and challenges associated with giving high schoolers iPods. Boerne ISD also shared their iPod User Contract.

Click to launch the Podcasting: Placing Learning in the Students' Hands webinar.
The webinar was presented and recorded using Adobe Connect.

"Picks from the App Store" Live Workshop 4-29-09

Please join me on Wednesday, April 29th for Picks from the App Store! This is the first in a series of free workshops for SIGHC members by SIGHC members. Even if you know nothing about SIGHC, you're still welcome join in. Here's the description of the online workshop:

The hottest handhelds today are Apple's iPod touch and iPhone. In addition to being great audio and video players, the iPod touch and iPhone run a mobile platform with over 25,000 software applications available from the App Store. With thousands of apps listed in the Education section of the App Store, it can be hard to find the very best apps for teaching and learning. SIGHC member Tony Vincent shares his educational app picks on Wednesday, April 29th at 3PM PST on Ustream.TV. Tony will present the first half-hour and the second half hour is reserved for participants to share their own picks and to ask questions. You can participate by joining the chat room on Ustream.tv and by calling in your picks via webcam at www.ustream.tv/channel/tony-vincent.

Before the beginning of the workshop, sign up for a free Ustream account so that you can pick out a username for the chat. To create a new account, simply click Sign Up, which is located in the top-left of each Ustream.tv page.

Participants are encouraged to have their webcams and microphones ready so they can talk about their own App Store picks and so they can ask questions. While the workshop will most likely be recorded and archived, I really hope you can join us live.

Oregon Trail for iPod touch

The original The Oregon Trail was released in 1971. If you have a hankering for the Apple II version of Oregon Trail, you can play it online--with old time graphics and sounds--at Virtual Apple 2. Students probably won't appreciate the ancient-looking game. The original version has a lot of text and unimpressive graphics.

What might impress them is the new iPhone/iPod touch version of Oregon Trail from The Learning Company. Available for $6 from the App Store, the Oregon Trail is quite fun to play. Here's the description of Oregon Trail from iTunes:

Westward, Ho! Your favorite pioneering adventure game is back and takes you to an exciting, historical side-scrolling adventure entirely rethought to fit the Touch experience of your iPhone / iPod touch.

• All of the decision-making and problem-solving fun of the original game, plus additional parameters to take the Oregon Trail experience even further than you've played before.
• 8 skill-based mini-games, including 2 accelerometer-based challenges: hunting, fishing, river crossing, rafting, wagon repairing, telegraph, berry picking, and gold panning.
• Random events (disease, bandits, hitchhikers, etc.) faced by real pioneers increases the challenge.
• Side-missions add more excitement to your journey, affecting your westward trek.
• Prepare for your departure: Select the members of your party, choose your departure date and purchase supplies.

Oregon Trail shares information like what clothing to wear, how much oxen weigh, and which is the best seat in the wagon. Of course, by playing students get to practice map skills, conserve resources, and develop a strategy. Teachers using this in school will enjoy teaching students about dysentery (and other historical diseases) as well as having students compare the game to the real struggles pioneers had traveling across North America.

Oregon Trail is getting rave review in iTunes. I've had a blast playing it and I know youngsters who were born after the 80s will too!

Besides Oregon Trail, the there's Westward in the App Store. This $5 game is a strategy game where you "control the destiny of the Wild West by building thriving towns, exploring uncharted plains, dense forests and rocky canyons and guiding settlers to safety and success." Westward is rated 12+ for mild profanity, fantasy violence, and tobacco and alcohol references.

New Video & Blog About Mobile Learning

Two of my favorite educators are Cathie Norris and Elliot Soloway (who have been evangelizing mobile learning for nearly a decade now). This dynamic duo are featured in a new video from the Mobile Learning Institute's video series A 21st Century Education. In the video Cathie and Elliot speak with teachers and students as they travel to some handheld-using schools. While en route, Cathie and Elliot talk about mobile learning. Here are some quotes from the artistic video:

"Mobile computers are the future. Laptops are very 90s. They're your daddy's computer. They're your parents' computers. They're not the kids' computers." - Elliot Soloway

"Just like a business person uses the computer 24/7--they use the computer for everything they do. That's the way we now conceptualize the way we use mobile computers." -Elliot Soloway

"It's going to be amazing to see how many of them [schools] go to cell phone computers rapidly because they're seeing that every child has one, every child knows how to use one, and that's why when we see districts like Keller saying, 'You know what? Rather then fight it, let's see if we can take advantage of it. Let's use the infrastructure that the tel co has. Rather than us spending our money building a wireless infrastructure, let's just use the tel co's structure.'" -Cathie Norris

"Mobile technologies are going to make a bigger change to our lives than the PC and Internet together. I mean, the PC changed everything. The Internet changed everything. But the mobile technologies is every bigger than that." - Elliot Soloway

Cathie and Elliot work tirelessly to deliver their message to anyone who will listen. I'm really pleased that together they have started a blog called Tech Disruptions. Here's how they describe their blog: "We will address topical issues that arise as technology continues in its inexorable way to engender changes in K12. Here is your opportunity to express opinions about the changes that technology has wrought."

I really enjoy the format of the blog--it's written as a transcript of a jovial conversation between Cathie and Elliot. So far Tech Disruptions has tackled topics like eBooks, mobile phone bans, and cloud computing.

Podcasting Yields Higher Scores than Attending the Lecture

I've been fascinated by the idea that teachers could flip-flop lectures and homework. Lectures could be podcasted (and put on DVD for those without internet) and assigned as the "homework," allowing for class time to be spent on discussion, collaboration, and reteaching. In July I wrote about a pair of high school chemistry teachers who are doing this very thing with great success.

The article "iTunes University" Better Than the Real Thing in last week's New Scientist reports the findings in a study from the State University of New York called Can Podcasts Replace Professors. The study found that students who listened to podcasted lectures performed better on tests over the lecture material than students who actually attended the lecture in person.

The study used 64 Psychology 101 students. Half of the students listened to an enhanced podcast (that's showing the lecture's slides along with playing the audio). The other half were given a print out of the slides and were present for the lecture.

Students who were in the podcast group averaged a 71% while those in the lecture group scored a 64% average when tested over the material in the podcast/lecture. However, those who listened to the podcast and did not take notes scored that same as those that attended the lecture. Those in the podcasting group that took notes averaged 77%.

These results would certainly be different in a K-12 environment. But, it makes sense that when students can pause, rewind, and rewatch a lecture they learn the material better. Podcasting lecture material has the added benefit of changing what can be accomplished during class time.