Your regular iPod will hold "notes," or "eBooks" if you will, just plain text files without any pictures, charts, or objects. These files are surprisingly easy to read on an iPod. Since the file is on your iPod, you can read it anytime, any place. iPod Touch and iPhone users have some other, more powerful options discussed in this post as well.

But what type of text will go on the regular iPod, and how do you get that text converted so you can put it your iPod--or your students' iPods?!

What Doesn't Work?
Let's start with what will not work. PDF files, per se, will not work on a regular iPod. (They will work on an iPod Touch or an iPhone if they are viewed through the device's Safari web browser as a webpage!) Word processed documents (like Microsoft Word documents) will not work, per se, on a regular iPod. However, we have a work around.

Work Around
The iPod Touch and iPhone both have the Safari web browser. This browser will load any pdf file just as it appears in the original document--pictures and formating. Beautitful. So just pop your pdf files up on your server and link them from a blog post. Easy!

Word documents can be saved as pdf files. In this way you can use the same trick above to make them available as your eBook. Keep in mind that your iPod Touch or iPhone needs to be using a wireless network to access the pdf file. AT&T's Edge network is much too slow to make accessing pdf files useful for the iPhone unless those files are very small! (See the Tip for Shrinking PDFs section in this post.)

Word documents can also be saved as plain text documents--an option in your save dialogue box. (See the pictures in this link.)

Text from pdfs and word processed document types can also be copied and pasted into a text editor, but this can be more trouble than it's worth--if, for example, the original document text was in two columns, you will be forced to do an unacceptable amount of editing to put the disjointed sentences all back together in one column.

Web Pages and Text Files?
Web pages can be converted (text only) into files that will work on your regular iPod. Text files created by a text editor can be converted for your iPod. (Your computer came with a free text editor on it. Mac users have TextEdit. Windows users have Notepad. A text editor is very different from a word processor as it offers very basic text only and must be in plain text mode.)

How to Convert Web Pages and Text Files
Go to this link and follow the directions. It's really easy. This site will convert any plain text file on your hard drive. The site will also convert webpages for you. Just enter the web address. When it is finished converting, the site provides step-by-step directions explaining how to get the file on your regular iPod.

Tip for Shrinking PDFs
Mac Users: I just learned this Quick Tip a few weeks ago--very cool! Radically shrinking a PDF, without much reduction in visual qulaity, is super easy on a Mac--just a couple of clicks.

But You Want Pictures in Your Step-By-Step Directions?
Check out this link at Apple.com for directions on saving text-only files and actually syncing them to your regular iPod (Windows and Mac).

Coming Soon
Personally, I focus my attention and gain greater comprehension when I read while hearing the text. You can create a video podcast of your computer reading text as you see the text scrolling by. I'll save that for a future post.

This isn't super easy to create but can be done. If I were a programmer... Then again, maybe someone has already written such a program. If you know of one, comment for us here so we can all learn about it. Special Education teachers would love this!

Photo Credit
The awesome iPod photo at the top of this post was taken by Oliver Lavery and provided by CC license at flickr, where he explains how he took the picture.