iQuiz – the next assessment innovation on iPods?

I was intrigued by an announcement today about a new free application dubbed iQuiz Maker by Aspyr Media. To understand the significance of this tool, you must first take a look at the recently released $0.99 iQuiz game for the Apple iPod:

Test your entertainment knowledge in iQuiz, the fast-paced trivia game for your iPod. Test your knowledge of the songs, albums, and artists you’ve got on your iPod, or try out trivia challenges for movies, music, and TV. Make your own custom trivia packs to share, or play trivia packs created by others.

When I first heard about this new games, I had no idea that “trivia packs” could be authored by mere mortals. When I read the description of iQuiz Maker, the wheels started turning:

iQuiz Maker is an easy way for you to create custom quizzes for the iQuiz game for the iPod. iQuiz Maker works seamlessly so you can write, create, package and test the smarts of people you know and even people you don’t know. Download the free application today to begin putting the world to the test.

I wonder if educators will view this as an opportunity to perform some light assessment on the iPod. Podcasting is a hot topic these days it seems like being able to use the same device for multiple purposes would be highly valuable. I cannot say whether iQuiz is the right vehicle for that or not, but it does make you start thinking about the iPod in new ways…

Updated 28 April 2007 – Two new sites of interest:

1. Apple has provided a sample Biology quiz on their Learning Interchange web site: http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali/story.php?itemID=11017.
2. One of the commenters pointed me to their iQuiz Library site. There is not a lot of content available yet, but you will find a sample Spanish quiz linked.

Updated 21 May 2007 – Another new iQuiz content creation tool/site:  http://iquizr.com/