14 DAY TRIAL // A quiz is a form of game or mind sport in which the players, either individuals or teams, attempt to answer questions correctly. Well, that was true until some time ago, when computer-based learning began to gain ground in a lot of fields, and interactive tutorials proved to be one of the best methods to learn a lot of things with your Mac or PC, from cooking to flying a plane. Of course that since times are changing and there are more devices capable of performing such tasks, more and more programs for the creation of interactive tutorial content appeared, and today I found about the first one that is able to create courses and quizzes for your iPod!
Yesterday, MediaClick Inc., a company based in Naples, Florida, released PodQuiz Maker, an application that gives a whole new meaning to your daily iPod use. Using this program, you can create and send to your iPods PodCourses and PodQuizzes. These interactive courses are able to include links to active content such as video presentation, and this happens in the instructional content area. Once you finished going through that part a few times - at least enough to "have an idea" about the subject - you can move on to the multiple-choice quiz able to provide you immediate feedback and a score.
MediaClick's President, Steve Cox, said that "We have a unique PodWare development product, because Apple does not want to provide Software Development Kits for the iPod." The fact that MediaClick managed to pull this through and release this product without any support from Apple makes me think about what may happen once the iPhone is available to the public, when enthusiasts may start writing software for it even without any help from Apple, since for a real hardware freak, the device is enough to start programming it...
The packaged PodCourses made with PodQuiz Maker use the iPod's support for basic HTML tags in the Notes Folder to create interactive content, and while educational use is excellent, full multimedia courses or simple quizzes for advertising purposes could also be created easily.
A trial version of this program is available for download and the official website includes a public user forum where PodCourses can be posted for download to any iPod. The really funny part is that, although it creates content for Apple's iPod, the PodQuiz Maker software is only available for Win98, WinNT 3.x and 4.x, Windows2000 and XP operating system, but not for Apple's Mac OS X.