The Gadgets Page

The end of the school year is looming, which means this is the big final test of the year. How are you going to study? Do you even have to study? When you can carry the breadth and depth of human knowledge in your iPod, should you be required to memorize all those dates and names? Isn’t it more important to know HOW to find information from reliable resources? Isn’t it more important to know WHICH information should be included?

Teachers would respond with a resounding, “NO!” Me, on the other hand, I don’t know. I gave up on the educational system a long time ago and I really feel that learning how to solve problems is more important than the specific names and dates of wars long past. Let’s solve a problem, shall we?

How do I get my most important information onto my iPod, so it will be with me everywhere I go?

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Just A Warning

If you cheat you WILL be caught. It might not be today or tomorrow, but eventually, you will be caught. Teachers are actually smarter than you think and you might not only get an F on your test, but your iPod may be confiscated as well.

But, there might be a time when you’ll need to know where the War of 1812 was fought, so you might need to keep that information with you at all times. If that’s the case, here’s how to do it.

Decide What’s Important

You can’t put EVERYTHING in your iPod. Sure, there’s enough space on the larger iPods to hold all of human knowledge, but you have to be able to FIND it. You have to decide which information should go into your iPod and which information will just get in the way. This is going to take some studying. This actually might take more studying than just memorizing everything, depending on your ability to put facts to mind. Me? I had a lot of trouble memorizing things unless I really analyzed them. Taking a good, hard look at the information in front of you and deciding whether it’s iPod-worthy is a good way to study, but it’s also the first step in cheating.

Write Your Crib Notes

Once you have a firm list of information that MUST be carried with you at all times, type it into a word processor. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on a PC or Mac, whether you use, Word, Textpad or even Google Docs. Type in every fact that you feel is so important that you have to carry it around in your iPod. Once you finish typing, save it as a .txt file. Don’t just save it like normal or this won’t work. It has to be a Text File (i.e. Warof1812.txt) or this won’t work.

Enable Disk Use On Your iPod

iPods are naturally protected from these sorts of things, so you have to make them a little vulnerable in order to save your data correctly.

• Connect your iPod to your computer like normal and let it complete its original sync.
• Select your iPod under Devices in the Source list.
• Click the Summary tab.
• In the Options section of the Summary window, click the “Enable disk use” box.

Now that you have enabled disk use on your iPod, you must ALWAYS eject your iPod from the computer instead of just pulling out the connector when the sync is finished. Otherwise, you’ll screw up your iPod and you DON’T want to take it to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store and have to tell them that you pulled the plug without ejecting. They’ll just laugh at you.

Put Your Essential Information On Your iPod

With your iPod still connected to the computer and disk use enabled, it will look like a hard drive when you open up the computer’s window. I haven’t tried this on a Mac, but on a PC, I opened up My Computer and an F: drive showed up. Open the iPod Notes folder and copy your .txt file that you saved previously to that folder. You can also save to that drive using your word processor if you prefer.

Sync Your iPod Again Before Ejecting It

Before ejecting your iPod, perform one final sync. Don’t forget to close the word processor that has your .txt file or iTunes won’t allow you to eject your iPod. Once you have synced and closed the word processor, you can press the eject button and it should allow you to disconnect your iPod.

Check Out Your Data

On your iPod, look to see what showed up. According to Apple, there are limits to your Note capabilities:

• The Notes feature supports a maximum of 1,000 notes. If you try to put more than that number in your iPod’s Notes folder hierarchy, only the first 1,000 will be loaded.
• The size of any single note is truncated to 4,096 bytes of text (about 1,000 words).

If you didn’t do a good job of choosing the most important information, you probably hit the limit in the Notes, so not all of your information is there. Go back through your notes and cull the information that you don’t feel as important. Make sure you organize the most important information toward the top of your document so you don’t have to scroll alot. In a quiet test room, scrolling is VERY noisy.

Follow the previous instructions to get the NEW note onto your iPod and check it again to see if all your data made it.

Delete Your Notes

Yep, I’m gonna tell you to delete the notes from your iPod. This information isn’t for after the test when you’re “finished” with it. Delete the notes BEFORE you take the test. I told you before that if you try to cheat with your iPod you WILL be caught, so don’t do it. Deciding on the most important facts, typing them in the text file and re-analyzing the data to make sure that you only have the MOST essential data is a better studying technique than any other I have ever learned. Now that you’ve done all that, you don’t NEED the information that you put on your iPod, so delete it so you don’t get in trouble.

• Connect the iPod to your computer and allow it to do its initial sync.
• Open the iPod window and open the iPod Notes folder.
• Delete your .txt files.

Trust Yourself More Than Technology

The human mind is far more versatile and useful than any iPod, cell phone or other data storage device. School is all about teaching your brain to work better than any computer could, don’t miss out on that chance.

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For more information about how to use the iPod Notes capability to its fullest, download this file:

• iPod Notes Feature Guide

If you would like to read Project Gutenberg books on your iPod, this website can convert them for you within the limitations that your iPod has:

• iPod Notes (iPod eBooks Creator) – convert books (text files) to notes on iPod