Hooking up iPod Touch for projection

[Nick Lutz]

Hi there,

Just joined this group and am looking forward to learning many things from everyone. I plan to purchase an iPod Touch for personal use and want to use it as a teaching tool in class (I teach English). My biggest hurdles (please forgive me as I am brand new to the iPod Touch world) are:

 

1) PC users: I am principally a PC user and wondered if there are an apps (free or otherwise) that will allow me to read and edit MS Office software using the iPod Touch? Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

 

2) Projection: What sort of cables to I need so that I can hook up the iPod touch to an LCD projector so I can project materials created in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint for the whole class to see? Will animation be lost?

 

I would like to thank you all in advance for any help you can give.

 

Cheers,

Nick

[John Potts]

I'd also like to know how to do this.

I know one can connect the Touch to a TV set, but will that work with a data projector? If anyone has actually done this (rather than speculate that it "should be possible") I'd be very grateful indeed to read her/his comments.

Thanks

John

[Bruce Brown]

It depends on the cable connections on your projector. If you can plug in a RCA cable - 3 colored plugs - the same way that you would plug it into your TV, it will work. Alternatively, for trade shows, we use a small pocket PICO projector that is specially designed for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Also, please check out our apps at www.eskillslearning.net. We just introduced a Reading for Details app that might be of interest to you. The Lite version is FREE of charge.

Bruce Brown

[e-mail]

[John Potts]

Thanks for your reply. However, I need to connect via a VGA adapter - the projectors are ceiling-mounted with a cable connection to the media console, so the RCA route isn't going to be possible.

I present in various universities, conference centres, schools etc where connecting in the ways you describe is not option. Moreover, a pocket PICO projector will  simply not have the throw or lumens for the size of room I work in.

Thanks again, but it looks as if the Touch can't connect to projectors if they are ceiling mounted.

Bruce Brown said:

It depends on the cable connections on your projector. If you can plug in a RCA cable - 3 colored plugs - the same way that you would plug it into your TV, it will work.

 

[Deon Scanlon]

There are some issues with this.

Firstly, iPod touches are not designed to achieve this, so solutions are not as simple as plugging in a cable.
Apple do sell a component video cable, a VGA adapter, and now an HDMI adapter, but none of these will share your screen like you want - on the iPod touch, they are only designed to show video content, such as from the media player or YouTube apps.

I can't confirm if the VGA and HDMI ones work on an iPod, but the RGB (component video ) does.

There are some apps that have external display options, but I've not heard of any that do what you are hoping to achieve.

An iPad 2, however, will.

A document projector, such as an ipevo (which only costs $AU95 at itmadesimple.com ) can solve the problem by projecting your iPod (and your hand when you touch it) to a VGA display.

[John Potts]

Thanks Deon. I'll have a look at the iPad 2 with this in mind.

[Alex]

I'm developing apps that run on iPod touch/ iPhones as well as through browsers. This is achieved primarily by developing using Flash Professional.

 

All Maths at the moment, but over the summer I intend more apps. The apps on the website can be used by anyone, as a teaching aid, for practice at home, etc. They are at www.trapps.co.uk. The downloadable apps are set at tier 1 pricing - intended for use by pupils or teachers on the go - but exactly the same functionality as in the browser.