iPods in Education

by Rich Garcia

Can the Apple iPod -- the symbol of a generation of students plugged in to downloaded music -- serve as a delivery system for serious education? Experiments at several universities are exploring the iPod's value as an educational technology.

• An experiment that began in 2002 at Georgia College and State University has led to several iPod-enhanced honors courses. Most involve music in some way--ethical issues as reflected in song lyrics, for example, or how musicians have protested or commemorated war. However, instructors leading classes in travel abroad have recorded lectures, language lessons, and cultural information as well, to make the most of the time spent on buses and trains.
• At Duke University, every incoming freshman in 2004 was given an iPod, and faculty have been devising interesting ways to use them. The university's Center for Instructional Technology lists eleven examples, and most don't involve music. For instance, students in the Fundamentals of Digital Signal Processing use the iPod with a microphone attachment to record ambient sounds, then bring them to the lab for analysis. For a large lecture class in Economics, lectures are made available for students to review before exams. An intensive class in Spanish distributes examples of authentic speech as an aid to comprehension and speaking exercises, and a writing class asks students to use their iPods to record three individuals' memories of important events, then compare these interviews to official accounts, to look for similarities and differences in the way collective memories are formed.
• A professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania has established a library of digital recordings of comtemporary poets reading their own works.

Are MIT faculty and students finding innovative academic uses for iPods? If you know of any examples, please comment below or send email to et-consult@mit.edu and we'll investigate and report on these uses in future Ed Tech Times articles.

References:
The iPod at GC&SU: A Pocketful of Learning.(n.d). Retrieved January 28, 2005 from http://ipod.gcsu.edu/project.html.
Duke Academic and Course iPod Projects. (n.d.). Retrieved January 28 from http://cit.duke.edu/about/ipod_faculty_projects.do.