Applications are downloaded through iTunes or on an iPod itself. Unfortunately, you must have a credit card associated with your iTunes account in order to download and install applications. If using a credit card is out of the question, then you are best sticking with using freely availble Web apps.

The good news is that about 25% of the applications are free of charge. Also, once purchased, you can install an application by syncing it to as many iPod touches and iPhones as you can connect to the computer. That's because Apple's Digital Rights Management allows for its protected apps, music, and videos to be placed on an unlimited number of iPods. However, protected iTunes content can only be copied to a total of 5 computers.

For a class set of iPods, it is easy to sync them to one or two classroom or media center computers. However, if the iPod goes home with a student, he or she can't sync applications from a home computer and a school computer.

Apple only recently opened up the iPod touch to 3rd party applications. New and exciting applications are being added everyday to the iTunes App Store. I'll be listing recommended applications on this page as I find ones that I think students and teachers would find useful.