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Duke University Giving iPods To 1650 Freshmen
baptiste writes "Duke University has entered into an agreement with Apple to distribute iPods to all of the incoming freshmen this year - that's 1650 iPods! This agreement is part of an initiative to "encourage creative uses of technology in education and campus life" The iPods will have audio and text on them including special university content such as "faculty-provided course content, including language lessons, music, recorded lectures and audio books." Faculty will be assisted in creating new content for these devices by Duke's Center for Instructional Technology And here you thought iPods were just for music!"
Free after your $30,000 tuition! Good for you! And if you're lucky enough to graduate after 4 years you're only down $120,000! But you got a "free" iPod!
Casual Games/Downloads
I can imagine this sponsored T-Shirt included in the obligatory frosh welcome kit:
"iPod University Graduate
Class of 2008"
(In an Apple Computer font. too.)
All this iPod news is getting me depressed. First I got shafted by buying a 3rd generation one only weeks before the 4th generation is released, for cheaper and better.
Then I find out that all the Duke freshmen are getting free ones.
Bummer. Maybe I should apply to Duke next year.
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Duke University has also raised tuition by $299.
The first time one of those Freshman herds wanders their way into Frat row looking for beer, it's going to get ugly.
I can see a bunch of pissed of Seniors beating the ever loving crap out of incoming freshman for their iPods. How do you tell them apart (unless they laser engrave them all).
How is this different from any of the "mandatory laptop" programs so many shcools impose on freshmen?
Same shit, different hardware.
It's not "free", it's all there in your tuition debt buddy...
Why did the Duke university had to shed out $300+ dollars for an iPod, while they could do the same thing (regarding text scheduling) with a Zire 31 that costs $140, and it can be expanded with SD cards if the students need to also listen to music.
I mean, this way the university could save a truck load of money and give out a handheld that is way more capable than the iPod in running real applications, plus having the ability to play mp3s!
I think that some people who take such decisions are just not practical.
If the INDUCE act passes, I have a feeling someone's in trouble... Sad, but true.
Vandemar.org
It must really suck to be a sophomore at Duke!
In unrelated news, tuition is up $399 this year.
A nice, big tuition increase. Yay!
Oh wait...
That's some good advertising. It seems like a ploy to lure more kids to their college, rather than a sincere techonological initiative. It's disgusting how colleges in the US are becoming more and more expensive, and entering a competitive advertisement scenario similar to the corporate arena. Hey, with the amount of money they charge for tuition, it's a business well worth it.
Guess it's time to reapply as a freshman?
Also, considering that Gates and his wife have donated $55 million to Duke since 1998, I wonder how/if this will affect the university's relationship with Microsoft.
-Matt
Duke '05
Jeez, I wonder what the cost of that deal was. Even at wholesale quantity pricing, that's a boatload of money. Let's see, 1650 iPods, let's assume a hugely generous discount so the wholesale cost is $200 each, that's $330k. Yow.
Of course the students end up paying for it anyway, in the "computer fees" that are usually tacked on to tuition.
Next up, Harvard to distribute gameboy advance
This oughta up the distraction level still further in my lectures. Jesus. I thought it was bad enough that you got the occasional antisocial bastard who sat there through the whole thing with his headphones pounding out crappy music constantly. Now everyone is getting iPods? I've already known two friends who have theirs nicked. This is just going to be money poured down the drain that would be better spent on something helpful. The batteries run out by the time they leave, anyway! I find this very annoying; it's difficult to structure my thoughts because I can't see what real benefit these provide. Listening to music out and about is just a novelty that wears off after a few weeks. Just a marketing gimmick. Just think! All these people will probably now go out and buy useless Apple stuff to go with it!
Hey kids, Uncle Steve says: Rip, Mix, Burn!
(Yeah like I actually bought music in college..
cassette deck? check. Friends with lots of CDs to borrow?? check. eyepatch and parrot? check.)
This is pretty cool but I must agree with an earlier poster: wouldn't a PDA be more flexible and interesting? I could see students doing all kinds of stuff with a wireless PDA. with the iPod I see them listening to music in class. Woo hoo.
On the other hand, as an Apple shareholder I welcome the strength of the Apple brand to the duke campus! Woo hoo!
"O'Brien cited as an example the elementary Spanish course taught by visiting assistant professor Lisa Merschel. Students in that course will use the iPods to listen to audio examples of textbook exercises, hear Spanish songs and record their own efforts to speak Spanish." When I was in high school we did these things with cassette tapes...for a lot cheaper...
If it's a give-away from apple, I can see why they overcharge the rest of us.
ha.. remember that musical montage scene in the movie "Real Genius" where the kid goes to physics lectures, each time he goes to class, there are fewer people and more tape recorders, until finally one day he goes in and there is nobody in the classroom, there's just a tape recorder delivering the lecture to a room full of tape recorders.
I first heard this story in 1974 when I visited MIT, they publish an annual guide for freshmen and someone gave me one, that story was in it, supposedly it was true.
But anyway, I can just see this happening with the iPods. They should have given away the Belkin voice recorder gadgets with the iPods.
Sucks for my friend... she just bought a 3rd gen. 2 days before the 4th gen came out, and to top it off, this fall she will be a freshman at Duke. Apple should schedule these things....
I see the tuition hike posts being modded as funny, but there's actual seriousness to that. The university I go to decided to give "free" laptops to the engineers, but in return hike up their tuition another 2,000 dollars in addition to the annual hike the whole university got. Free...more like "forced"
What about people who already own, or just bought a brand new ipod? Do they have to rebuy a new one again with their tuition?
Oh come on, give me a break... Sure they can be used for something else, in the same way that you can save any file you want on the iPod, but how many students are really going to use it that way?
WOW! Audio files that aren't music on my iPod. w00t!
Nothing ruins an iPod like having to listen to freakin' classwork on it. Imagine the newbies setting it on a full-library shuffle, not realizing that a good shuffle-mix of tunes will eventually be interrupted by the drone of a professor on modern auditory cues in the urban world or some useless college crap like that.
"hear Spanish songs and record their own efforts to speak Spanish." Just what I need, a $300 iPod to listen to my own crappy, broken spanish... What "language" they really need to use this for is C++ or Java so they can transport files, etc.
i've been to duke university (dropped out cause of finaincial aid trouble) what crazy junk is this
:: binary revolution
Website
--- Website: http://spinhex.sytes.net/
...all the freshmen gets sued by the RIAA for pirating music...
(It's logical - they own a digital playbackdevice and has access to 'da interweb'; off course they steal music, and at least 10 gig each)
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
I had a professor that has collected the tuition rates for the past 25 years. He uses it as a data set for elementary math classes, there is a lab where they determine that the best fit approximation is exponential (!).
cmeador
. . . Especially the ones working all summer to barely pay their tuition as it is. I mean... who needs food when you have an iPod? Good call Duke! At least schools with mandatory laptop programs can claim they are for school... I don't really know what Duke was thinking. Probably just wanted to gain the image of the most "hip" university or something like that... but it just comes off to me as stupid.
A man walks into a bar. The bartender says, "What is this, some kind of joke?"
..Orders placed on the new "iPod" music player from Apple Computers Inc, on it's "Applestore" online store will be delayed, sources confirmed. Rumours are that a high-priority customer ordered more than 1600 units of the new iPod, causing significant delays to end consumers. Angry Apple customers have once again, turned to sites like "Crazy Apple Rumours" for immediate relief.
Welcome to the club. I got screwed for eight years there, and not the gentle kind of screwing, the deep hurting kind. A better use of the time and the money would have been limo leases, then running Papa Smithsons out of business.
While this may seem weird at first, it's really not all that different from Universities that require (or give) students have laptops to a certain specification. Knowing that every student has an iPod lets you do cool things like distribute language lessons for them, be able to standardly trade music for a music class (no more problems with students or teachers that don't have a CD burner or a tape player or a computer to play the music on). Now whether it really makes sense considering the cost of the iPods is another matter, but who knows, Apple is certainly giving them a massive discount because they're both buying in bulk and giving Apple more positive press (just like the G5 cluster did).
Here at Microsoft, we recently launched Office 2004 for OS X. The entirety of MacBU (that's Mac Business Unit) received iPods as ship presents. Kinda makes me feel like I'm working for the wrong group :)
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Keep those ipod stories coming. I mean is there anything else more important? Good thing /. wasn't around when the walman came out.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
Slashdot: News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. Oh yeah, and constant articles about the iPod, as well.
I will be a senior at a "laptop school" on the east coast. At my school, each student is forced to rent an iBook to use during the four school years. Now since the entire school is based on Macs, many many students purchase iPods to go along with their Macs. In the last month of school, several dozen students found a program that would allow iPods to display text from files on the iPod. Six of these students were caught cheating on their final exams, and two were caught after having downloaded a 32 gig dictionary to their iPods and using them on the SAT. iPods are a great tool as long as everyone realizes that they are not radios, they are hard drives and can be used to remove data surreptitiously, or to covertly access data, or just general data storage.
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
I guess Duke won't be getting a RIAA enforced subscription to Napster then.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out.
...and what happens when the students attach the iPods to their own computers, and get all of the 'educational' audio erased?
i don't know what's better - the faculty supplied content or the free carrier ? go tarheels :-p
- my girlfriend can beat up your girlfriend.
I've been looking for a good place to go to snag an iPod. I'm tired of trying to pick-pocket ones around Atlanta where the ratio of iPod to non-iPod owners is 1:100. I can just head to Duke for the weekend and lift as many as I can carry!
And if that fails, I'll see about opening up a high-quality headphone sales kiosk next to the Duke Campus!
some actual EDUCATION? Isn't this what they're there for?
Apple has always been strongly involved in education, even when losing ground to PCs in the market, Apple's market share in the educational arena has remained sizeable.
This new move, however, is worrisome. It is clear that is scheme to "distribute" Ipods among Duke freshmen is nothing but a naked marketing move on Apple's part: sellng the already high-margin Ipods at a so-called "discount" to Duke under the thin pretext of using them as an educational device, then pushing Itunes, and relying on the soon-to-be-well-paid Duke graduates to keep buying Apple products in the future.
It is a shame that a fine institution Duke has gone in for such a blatant moneymaking gimmick. This is little different from allowing companies like Coca-Cola to produce "educational" material for our public schools. I would hope the Duke adminsistration would have taken a page from and choose integrity over money, but such is not to be. For shame.
So I guess within 2 years there'll be a market for at least a thousand "I went to Duke University and all I got was this lousy iPod" T-Shirts?
The duke students will just record 10 GB of each other chanting obscentites. They're still just miffed UNC was the first internet radio simulcaster. Using a panasonic platnium boom box, CUSeeMee, a sunstation, and dual OC45 pipes straight to the backbone was a REALLY cool first use of tech innovation http://www.wxyc.org
[KARMA]a man's character is his fate - Heraclitius[/KARMA]
You can't watch something that small all the time. They'll get stolen. Plus, college kids are irresponsible. I was one not too long ago. They'll get left everywhere. There will be lines at the lost and found for iPods and confusion as to which iPod belongs to whom.
Will it run Linux?
"My logic is undeniable."
After the RIAA and Apple take their share, how much of the money from their downloaded lectures are the professors gonna see?
The Duke freshmen who download these lectures from iTunes are just supporting an exploitative, dying industry! ;)
The iPods will have audio and text on them including special university content such as "faculty-provided course content, including language lessons, music, recorded lectures and audio books."
...and pr0n. Maybe not exactly when they are handed out, but give it time.
I heard on the radio the other day that Apple has had so much grief over its "new battery - you have to buy a new ipod" policy, that now if you go into an apple store and pull out your ipod and complain about the battery, they offer you a "battery replacement service" for free, which essentially means them going out the back and getting you a new ipod.
I don't know if this is true or not and I'm not going and spending the $800 they cost here to find out.
And you thought the BMW was going to be the biggest iPod accessory ever! Now all the students have a whole university to plug into them!
lol microsoft sucksores!!!1
~ Aero
How come when Microsoft gives away 'free' stuff to academic/government organisations the slashdot crowd slams them for unethical business practices, witchcraft and other unwholesome activities... but when Apple effectively locks in iPod and iTunes as the essential student/music listening tools for an entire university campus, the VERY SAME slashdot readers all post about how super kewl Apple is and how they wish they went to the University in question.
I have read this far down the comments list and not one comment has been critical of Apple, and only a few critical of the University. Is a little objectivity too much to ask? I know that it's not quite on the same level as MS using free software to try to wipe out competition across entire markets, but it is nonetheless a shameless commercial ploy to eliminate competition, albeit in a rather smaller market.
Read Pynchon.
Tisk, jealous much? :-p
Yup, until Johnny Freshman doesn't have room for the latest Avril song.
Hmm. Delete Linkin Park song, or some professor yacking about french. Hmmmm.
Please help metamoderate.
Now we're seeing what happens when the entire product and all its components come from a very low wage, but high tech, country.
Somebody is going to eat the iPod for lunch, probably before xmas.
Many professors have still refused to adopt the internet as a way of getting information to students and Al Gore invented that over 10 years ago. Other than the CS classes and a few tech-savy professors elsewhere this won't even be attempted.
For those that do, It will take a long time for them to gather audio lectures and exactly how helpful are they without the visual aids behind them? The same is true for audio books. Technical audio books are not exactly the easiest way to learn a subject. The best use for audio books would be for literature, but as stated above, humanities professors are the ones least inclined to adopt this type of idea. Even then trying to learn the theme or symbolism from an audio book is quite hard. You can't flip back and forth as easily as you can with the written form.
My guess is that there will be a big craze and initial educational push as professors *try* to make the idea work, but after a month it will only be used by students to trade prOn and music before class starts or during lunch. Not that that's a bad thing. I am all for easier to access prOn, but for the majority the educational benefit is little.
Apple to Napster:
"Haha, fuck you."
in a secret meeting, Duke President Dick Brodhead (no, really) announced that he, for one, would like to welcome our new Apple overlords.
Interested to know how they do this.
If you sync an iPod with an iTunes Library, and you try and use the iPod with another library, in most cases the iPod will be ereased, you can't just sync back the other way. So if they are pre-syncing some of the audiobooks, what happens when the student tries to sync with their computer?
Distractions? This ain't no high school. If the introduction of a free toy reveals that the entire student body is afflicted with ADD, I think it's time to switch schools. Either that or time for the school to enter into a simliar agreement with the makers of Ritalin.
In my school, one of ipods cool factors is being one of the only few people having it. Unquiness(shining back, high price, limited quantity) is what is making ipod (and me) stand out in a crowd.
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
Let's do a little math...
...not to mention the fact that I'll get an education, too!
I'll be attending UC Berkeley next fall, for around 20k/year, including room and board. To attend Duke (which would be retarded, as Berkeley is the #2 engineering school in the nation, and Duke doesn't even come close in that field...and hence, I didn't even apply to Duke), I'd have to pay approximately 40k/year, including room and board. Thus, to attend four years at UC Berkeley, it'll cost me 80k, as opposed to 160k for Duke. Going to Berkeley will save me 80k.
Now, how many iPods can you get with 80k? Assuming that we're dealing with 20GB ipods, going to Berkeley gets me approximately 268 iPods (a pure estimation, of course). Going to Duke would get me one. That means that I've essentially been given 267 iPods for going to UC Berkeley...
If I were a student at Duke, I'd be appalled. Doesn't Duke have something better to do with its money...the money that the students pay? I know that Berkeley actually takes proper care of our cash...
*Scratches head*
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." -Archimedes
This is the same school that installed ethernet in a parking lot so the students could camp out 2 weeks for a basketball game and still download music... I mean, study...
Anyone who thinks iPods should make the Slashdot frontpage a bit *less* mod this up, please...
You can flood the Apple pages as much as you want for all I care.
Any important iPod news (new models) is fine by me, but this stuff and the silly story about the Wifi text file is just too much...
Stop rubbing it in baptiste, I bet I know something you don't.
They'll be giving out TiVo's so the students will never miss another Simps... I mean, Nova.
And here you thought iPods were just for music
I bet that is all they'll end up being used for.
meh
You can't work enough over the summer to pay for tuition at Duke. You've either got a loan, a grant, or a rich family.
Well, if you CAN make $30k over a summer, you're kinda wasting your time in college....
$299 iPod/$30,000 tuition = an insignificant fraction.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
"Many professors have still refused to adopt the internet as a way of getting information to students and Al Gore invented that over 10 years ago. Other than the CS classes and a few tech-savy professors elsewhere this won't even be attempted."o p=Reply&threshold=2&commentsort=0&tid=146&mode=nes ted&pid=9746212
o p=Reply&threshold=2&commentsort=0&tid=146&mode=nes ted&pid=9746393
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=115051&
Free iPods for every professor? I disagree, audio files are great for memorizing text.
"That's excellent! How well does the data restore work when you lose your pda, er pad?"
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=115051&
How often disks in iPod crash? Does someone have information or experience?
So, my question is will this versatile music selection system being marketed as a "Dukebox"?
...is rightfully and justifiably hauled over the coals for their latest dirty trick, every fucking clueless MCSE (and is there any other kind?) starts whining about it?
YES, you wasted your trustfund on totally useless M$ cert because your daddy couldn't stand you around his law firm's offices anymore and got you a job in the IT dept, and so you are desperate to spin it as NOT the worst thing ever.
BUT don't fucking whine to us because you bent over for the worst fucking pack of cunts this side of Halliburton and Enron.
OK?
I actually remember going to classes with my headphone on, my techno pumping, and being the only person awake in lecture halls seating 300. Every teacher I had was at first offended and annoyed, and then understood after seeing me for a couple of classes. Having a lively but non-distracting beat kept my focused, and my music was quiet enough to hear what was being taught and not disturb anyone around me. I even had a couple of teachers point it out in particularly sleep-inducing classes as something other people should try after they saw how I could keep writing the notes as other people snored.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, I can see how and why music in the classroom could be a bad thing. But it was the best thing to ever happen to my college education.
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
and take another look at the SAT Acceptable Calculators policy.
;-)
SAT II Math IC & IIC even require them. And my TI-89 may not have the storage of the iPod, but it has a hell of a lot more functionality and programmability.
All that being said, it sounds like these students had them out during the verbal section - which is not allowed. Just wanted to point out why all blanket statements are bad... including this one.
Actually, I find that the educational potential of portable audio players like the iPod is enormous. The problem at the moment is the scarcity of audio course materials.
I would love to have these universities that are beginning to put courseware online start providing downloadable audio lecture files. (OGG or MP3 to make them as vendor-neutral as possible.)
If they value "broad, liberal education" so much and have such a hard time finding room for all the people who want to enroll, let them provide their history classes, foreign languages, music appreciation, philosophy, poli sci, etc., as downloadable audio courses that anyone can download and, to the extent possible, let those who want credit take a machine gradable test or series of tests so that attention from a live instructor is not needed.
A lot of classes couldn't be done this way (calculus, circuit analysis, etc.), but many could, and this is one way a university could enable engineering students (for ex.) to get more liberal arts and humanities without the need to double tuition and make the university ever tougher to get in to. And once they did the work to create these audio courses, they could let anyone (not just students) download them for just the marginal cost of additional bandwidth. They could then minimize even that cost by putting the material in the public domain and explicitly allowing P2P sharing.
(For that matter, I'd like to see organizations like the BBC, NPR, NHK, etc. start providing their archives in downloadable OGG or MP3 instead of just streaming RealAudio. NHK has terrific language courses available on the radio every day in Japan, but you have to live in Japan to hear them. As far as I know, you can't download them and that seems absurdly wasteful since they put so much work into creating them.)
Then, universities could require students to have portable audio players capable of playing MP3s & OGGs or provide them with one that can and serve more and better courses to more students with fewer faculty and staff and help reduce the outrageous rate of inflation in costs of higher ed.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
This is marketing inside educational institute!! It's just plain wrong to do this!
"Duke sucks!"
You cant fight in here, its a war room!
Just don't get caught like Young Mikey did
Just p2p all the Longhorn code a few days after its out.
That should do nicely. Hmmm juicy.
Utah Sate University Students get the same! Here in Utah, even the legislature got into the act. They made it mandatory for all students entering the state primarily to go to school pay out-of-state tuition for 2 years instead of one. Yay! They claimed that students didn't contribute anything to the state (taxes or otherwise), so they didn't deserve in-state tuition after just one year. This just goes to show that students should vote. Then they might be able to put a little fear into the politicians.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...Slashdotters would be crying foul saying M$ is strengthening its monopoly. This action will definately be sighted by M$ in the future.
"Go to Duke, get an iPod"
by Chris Seibold
Columnist/Cartoonist
Monday, 07/19/04
"According to This CBSMarketwatch story Duke University will be giving all incoming freshman an iPod. In addition to playing music the iPod will supposedly be used for more academic concerns such as school calendars and supplementary class materials."
"Good news for those who hate Duke:
(We) are starting our own pilot program. For the same 30 grand you'd spend for a year at Duke we'll set you up with an iPod, iPod mini, Dual 2.5Ghz G5 PowerMac, 30 inch Apple Monitor and tuition to the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. How can you pass it up? Financial aid not available."
(Source: MyMac.com)
I'm not stealing an iPod until Apple supports OGG!
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
I wonder if the students will have to pay extra money for their battery changing in their higher years. Has Duke University covered this fees?
I would like hackers combat this type of sites.
Nada sale de la nada, por tanto todo es eterno, solo que dispuesto de diferente forma.
Let's try an experiment. Tomorrow, post exactly the same story, but change the name of the college and change "Apple" to "Microsoft." See the comments change to condemnation of a big corporation using their false benevolence to coerce gullible Freshmen to buy their products.
Or perhaps we could give the freshmen a coupon for a free download of a Linux distribution.
Apache guy, Open Source enthusiast, runner
What was a bargain in 1986 was no longer one in 1990. No regrets though.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
I for one would love to have college books distributed in Mp3 or other audio format so I could listen to them while driving, walking, or whatever.
Of course air conditioning the Freshmen dorms in hot fetid North Carolina wouldn't be a bad idea either.
Personally, I'm glad to see this happening. This will be an excellent example of how the iPod has significant uses which do not involve pirating of their music. I think this would be a good strategy for just about anyone who is being singled out by the recording industry for aiding piracy. It would certainly make it much harder to show that something is being used exclusively for piracy when there are large institutions publicly declaring their use of that technology in a perfectly legit way.
"Tech House is what girls call techno and boys call house" (Layo Paskin)
There has been talk about giving greater support to music and arts, at all levels of education, grade school on up. Creativity is important.
.
I have this disturbing vision though, sometimes, of what music class might boil down to - the concept of being famous, of being cool, of finding inspiration in pop music. Creativity equating to pushover, student-pleasing teachers that allow their music students to act out their fantasies of fame and popularity in class, in front of other students, in the name of music education and appreciation. A poor substitute for what could be important groundwork for a strong creative arts curriculum.
Ok, maybe that's my personal nightmare, and actually, I hope that I am wrong. But when I see something like this, it reaffirms my dilemna.
Supporting music and the arts in the classroom, at all levels of education, grade school on up, does not necessarily have to equate to "cool", or "popular", or whatever.
I don't think that this is a good thing, handing out all those Ipods, because there are many ways to do things, and everybody learns differently. Quality education, like open source software, is (should be) about customizing the educational environment so that you can learn in the most efficient way possible, which is ultimately different for each student.
I suppose if you are paying out this much money for tuition an Ipod might as well be as irrelevant as a welcoming brochure, so it's probably not really that big of a deal.
It would be better, however, to simply hand out the iPods and not try to conjure up some kind of excuse and to not try and find some productive use for them. That's the kind of stuff that got Martha thrown in jail, if you think about it.
All this really goes to show is how respect for multimedia, creativity, and the arts, has been slipping in our educational systems, because as we can see here in this case, the creative arts are being used as an excuse to give everyone iPods, just like they are used as an excuse by students who wish to entertain their secret fantasies of fame and fortune.
It's (should be) about the creativity, it's (should be) about the expression, the wit, the depth of expression that we can experience when we watch a good movie, or listen to a good piece of music.
A light bulb went off in someone's head, and they figured out how useful this contraption could be in furthering what that individual percieves as "underwater basket weaving" - unimportant, easy to manipulate, "won't pay the mortgage" creative arts. It would be interesting if there were any comparsion studies done between different approaches. Let's compare the purchase of these iPods to the purchase of textbooks, or the selection of teaching staff - and then we will see
We need more respect for the creative arts, from the grade-school level on up.
I actually watched an economics professor yesterday on C-Span talking about all the stupid reasons why college costs are going up....I think he had this sort of stuff in mind.
My college, a small private women's college in Japan, gave (actually rolled the cost into student fees) 15G iPods to this year's incoming class of freshman. We pre-installed a series of listening materials (conversations, etc) and are involved in developing more advanced and comprehensive materials for future classes. We've been covered in MacFan magazine here but I don't think its been published in English.
It's been a good program so far and a large percentage of students are using the machines. Unfortunately many of our students are computer illiterate or have very low skills and thus aren't able to use the iPod on their own for personal study or amusement. But we're off in the right direction and the program will be getting better as it grows, undoubtedly.
We might go with iPod minis next year since they don't need the extra space. We are encouraging students to use them as hard disks as well as listening devices.
Etc, etc, ad nauseam, and so on and so forth.
But an iPod can be a valid learning tool. Right now I'm trying to learn a third language (Cantonese) and I've got all the material I could find loaded onto my iPod. I listen on my way to and from work and I have to say it's going quite well.
I hope this school provides the material that was loaded onto the iPods for download by their older students.
My wife uses her iPod almost exclusively to listen to audiobooks while she exercises.
:)
Music? That's what you listen to when you're in the car.
Wouldn't it have made more sense to give them an MP3 player that had builtin audio recording? This is why I didn't buy an Ipod (well, that and the lack of a builtin compact flash reader). My Archos has these features built in and cost less than the Ipod.
There have been some references so far to how much Duke will cost you yearly ($27,000), and I just thought I'd point out for anyone who doesn't happen to know that Duke's financial aid works on 100% financial need. Basically they calculate how much your family is capable of paying, and they go find the grants to help pay the rest. For example, I received a $20,000+ financial aid package, although I think it was more around $23,000.
Just something good to know for anyone who's still considering colleges and is worried about cost. A number of other colleges operate on the same system (i.e. MIT, CMU, Yale, etc), so keep your eyes open.
...if Duke gave away the iPods, but made all the lectures available as OGG files?
Tim
Unlike the Field of Dreams, having the system in place does nothing to actually see the faculty trained in the use of the devices. From my experience as a recent college grad reading the alumni bulletins, this sounds suspiciously like one of those improvements a school makes solely to CLAIM it's made them, with relatively little regard to whether the money is well-spent in terms of its students' education.
"See, we're hip, we're constantly updating to the times, and we can only keep doing this if you give us all your money! Information on how to leave us your estate is enclosed (I'm not kidding about that part)."
Though I suppose at least in this case the students get a free iPod out of the deal.
This would never happen. Many professors don't allow tape recorders or video cameras during lectures because they're afraid people will redistribute them. Those lectures are often original, possibly based on the professor's own research, and the only way they keep their jobs is if they have to keep presenting them year after year. Or perhaps you've never heard of intellectual property?
an influx of iPods onto ebay the day classes start...
I'm gonna see if I can pick one up for a case of beer.
But don't forget to check e-bay for some great deals on new and used iPods in the Durham, NC area.
How many freshman already have iPods. How many could care less? How many wouldn't mind an extra couple hundred bucks for beer money?
Maybe this is true in grad school, or at some private universities, but at any public university, the professor will either be lecturing straight from the book or they would at least give the same lectures every semester. Professors have an interesting view of intellectual property, to say the least. They seem to think they should be able to use anyone's material, so long as they cite sources, but that nobody should be able to use their's. This same line of reasoning is used to prohibit companies that sell class notes on college campuses, and it falls flat on it's face.
It doesn't have to be a high school for college kids to want to do other things. We had iPAQs introduced for the two years of incoming CS and ECE students. Bad idea. We're not Duke, but the U of MN Duluth isn't St. Cloud State either. They will get distracted.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
No joke. Do you think Computer Science I teachers are doing revolutionary new research into how to teach kids C? Well, maybe, some are. But for most classes that most profs teach it has nothing to do with their research. A lot of unis try to give profs classes with material they at least don't hate, but not even that sometimes.
Most professors aren't babies. They want their students to succeed, not just show up and be a warm body in the seat.
I've never known a prof who cared about using tape recorders. Mind you, I've only gone to this University (U of MN Duluth) and a community college in HS, but still I've never heard of such a thing.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
They should have given away the Belkin voice recorder gadgets with the iPods.
But the Belkin voice recorder will randomly decide to periodically record a paid advertisement instead of your lecture.
I'd like an iPod, but iRiver's got the direct-record-to-mp3 from an external mic going -- I've heard it's pretty good, and I'd give it a try if I weren't almost done with classes. It sounds useful -- anybody else use one this way?
For prerecorded content, my local library is a good source for some educational material (The Teaching Company's "History of Science" is a great example of this done correctly.)
I'm not sure if you meant that NHK's language courses were only available in Japan or only available in non-RealAudio format in Japan. You can grab realaudio streams from http://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/ , and slashdotters should know where to pick up a realaudio streamripper and format converter. It's actually engaging enough to keep my interest over the long bus ride into campus -- I just wish I'd learned about it earlier (or could find earlier episodes!)
I don't like the iPod. I don't listen to much music and it's just an extra piece of equipment you've got to carry around. eBay, anyone?
Amen.
Why do you hate Macs?
Yo mama so fake, she failed the Turing Test.
Duke seniors have slightly used iPods.
I wonder if these iPods are truly gifts to the students, or if they are considered to still be university property and thus cannot be resold?
I'm guessing that many of the incoming students may already have iPods and really don't need two. I suppose they could already sell the one they already have, but if (for example) Duke gives out the 20GB models, and a given student already has a 40GB, they would probably want to sell the newer one (might even get them more money despite the size difference, since it'd be brand new)
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
I would love to have these universities that are beginning to put courseware online start providing downloadable audio lecture files. (OGG or MP3 to make them as vendor-neutral as possible.)
The University of Minnesota is already starting to do that with their Digital Audio Initiative. Want to learn Pashtun or Punjabi? You can. You can also study Shakespeare, British literature, science fiction, or learn how to write a short story.
More courses can be found here. They're adding courses, but slowly. It's worth bookmarking.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
You Yucksters!
For that kind of money I could go four years at New Mexico State!
All I would need is pen and paper. Remember those?
I guess I'll have to go to another school.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Damnit! I knew I should've gone to Duke instead of NC State!
Oh wait, that's right! I couldn't get in nor could I afford the tuition.
Wolfpack rules!
Transistors and Beer!!
30K * 10% = 33,000
33K * 10% = 36,300
36,300 * 10% = 39,930
39,930 * 10% = 43,923
Even spread across four years, with an interest rate you're unlikely to see in the forseeable future -- and certainly not without inflation -- you're looking at closer to $150,000.
Of course, if you take that same calculation out to 30 years, then we're talking about real money.
People who pay their own way do not go to Duke. Sure, some folks who are exceptional in an acedemic way and possibly in the affirmative-action sense may get a full-ride or something close to it.
But the point stands for schools where that does happen. My school started a compulsary iPAQ program for incoming freshmen of CS, IST and ECE majors the year I was a sophmore. No way I would've gone here had that been the case for me- I wasn't going to spend $800 on a PDA and accessories and fees, and you bet I would definately avoid a school that required me to lease a $2000+ laptop. But I'm not a Duke student, I don't have mummy and daddy's money or help in any way.
Working all summer? Heh. I wish it were that easy. Try working 40-50 hours a week all school year, plus a full load, and working 70 hours a week during the summer. School loses relevance quickly, leaving you wondering what kind of whole you're shoveling your money down...
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Laptops, at least, I can understand, even if they don't come with my OS of choice. But to pay for an expensive toy with my money would piss me off. [/grumpy young man]
There is a great deal of chatter about how Duke is so stupid as to fall for Apple's marketing and this thinly vailed disguise to get the students buying iTunes and so on.
/. every day so you tell me if you think I was in the 'in crowd') was the first in the US to distribute Palm PDAs to incoming Freshmen. The idea was that they would be able to keep organized, download class schedules, take quizes, etc. (read more). This was seen by some as just a way to get local media attention and promote the school.
Let me give a different perspective. The high school I went to (yeah it was private but I read
But it really did help the students. Sure you can beam stuff and play games and otherwise goof off with the device, but it also helped the students stay organized and keep their digital documents with them when they need them.
Now I'm not saying the iPod is going to help Duke students graduate in 3 years, and there are huge differences between the iPod and a PDA, but for digital arts students who need to work on a project outside the studio, or the Comp Sci student who wants a backup of the source for their thesis, there are applications outside the music realm.
Not to mention, this huge roaming profile rumor that one will be able to keep their user profile on an iPod, and when connected to a Mac, at home or on campus, log into their user account with their background and preferences, desktop files, user directory files, iCal calendar, address book contacts, Safari browser bookmarks, etc.
Now THAT would make huge sense on a campus setting.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
God that sucked. Especially with lectures at 9:10.
IAAL,BIANLY
Tuition: $29,350
Room and Board: $8,210
Personal Expenses Books & Supplies: $2,520
Total Cost: $40,080
Duke.edu
Same here at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. 13% here. It was 13% last year too.
:)
Although, if things work out as planned, my chump rear end won't be in school this fall. Instead, I'll be working at it, doing IT stuff for the library. I've worked here fas a student for 5 years, but hopefully I'll get this "real" job. If I did, my wage will double, I'll have benefits, and my part-time tuition will be free! Doing the same job no less. Cross your fingers, pray, perform ceremonial magick- whatever it is you do- for me.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
;) We used to do network redhat installs from sunsite because we could get faster throughput over the network down the road to chapel hill than we could get off older CD-ROMs. Those were the days. Crappy cable modem...
IAAL,BIANLY
. . . if they bundled the iPods with one of these. Even the smallest capacity iPod currently sold could probably hold an entire semester's worth of lectures.
If they value "broad, liberal education" so much and have such a hard time finding room for all the people who want to enroll, let them provide their history classes, foreign languages, music appreciation, philosophy, poli sci, etc., as downloadable audio courses that anyone can download and, to the extent possible, let those who want credit take a machine gradable test or series of tests so that attention from a live instructor is not needed.
The "give course content away free" part of your idea is perfectly feasible. There are, of course, sticky intellectual property issues involved. MIT seems to be doing well with OpenCourseWare which does exactly what you asked with respect to giving away course content.
However, there is no way to do this and give people credit. Our accreditation bodies would (rightfully so) not allow us to do this and remain accredited. Think of it as quality control.
Please don't ask me how we get away with "distance education" and remain accredited. It's not much different from what you're asking ("put the material online and have a computerized test!"). :(
I hate to inturrupt a fine paranoid rant, but it's Duke's choice to do this - it's not like Apple is giving these away. Or should Apple specifically seek to disallow large volume sales of units just to meake sure they are not over-marketing?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One exciting advantage of using the iPod though is you get to use a feature like pitch-shifting - where you can speed up the audio by about 25% or so and still have it sound natural. While that might not be a good idea for language courses, I can think of plenty of lectures I would love to have listened to 25% faster (even 50% I could have kept up I think).
And of course you have much better randome access, and can also hold the equivilent of several backpacks worth of audio tapes, for more variety of language samples.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I watched that one right after I saw this free iPod thing mentioned on Mac Rumors. Very interesting speech.
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
Utah Sate University Students get the same! Here in Utah, even the legislature got into the act. They made it mandatory for all students entering the state primarily to go to school pay out-of-state tuition for 2 years instead of one. Yay! They claimed that students didn't contribute anything to the state (taxes or otherwise), so they didn't deserve in-state tuition after just one year. This just goes to show that students should vote. Then they might be able to put a little fear into the politicians.
Pennsylvania requires that you live in the state for one year without taking any college courses in order to be considered a resident.
Which makes a good bit of sense and isn't outrageous. Nothing unusual or underhanded about it.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
You should not consider cost alone in factoring which school to attend - even though UC Berkley might appear to be cheaper you also have to factor what the financial aid is like. When I went to college I had a choice between Rice or a few Colorado schools. The Colorado schools were all much cheaper than rice - but after financial aid the local schools in fact cost 3x what it cost to go to Rice!!
Perhaps you had other reasons to prefer UCB, but usually schools like Duke with huge tuitions also have good financial aid with lots of grant money to be had.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For those individuals wonder why they are paying more for Duke this year, now you know. And knowing is half the battle! GIJOE!!!
I suggested something similar at McGill for the language labs.
Instead of providing anything REMOTELY useful, they've decided to adopt an infuriatingly poorly designed difficult to use irritiating system called Can8. The super parts of Can8 use in the language lab:
-No printing from vocabulary lists so you have to scrawl down anything they put up, which is all but impossible in the alotted time.
-No access except during office hours, which makes studying impossible for anyone who holds a part time job during the day.
-No net access or ability to download any of the audio onto any sort of removable media.
When I said as much to the "technologist" along with some potential solutions she replied: yeah that's a bummer. Too bad.
In short, I'd like to opine that McGill spanks the monkey and will never be able to compete on a serious level because it's run by a bunch of backwards bureaucrats.
That's pretty cynical: The fact that they're even giving out 1 IPOD to any student is applaudable, and the creative way that they are pursuing it - putting some courses on the IPOD - is a good way to "creatively use" the IPOD as a tool rather than just a walkman.
You'd think that most people on Slashdot would see this as a step in the right direction, something that would bolster smaller colleges and universities to follow suit.
But instead, cynicism takes over and non-thinking albeit cleverly worded minds prevail.
Sad.
As a 2004 grad of Duke, I'm guessing this has a lot to do with Kazaa. There are untold gigabytes per day of illegal files zooming around the campus network. They don't want to put stops on internet use, but its clearly a problem both from a network infrastructure standpoint and an RIAA CYA standpoint. If they can push iTunes, it could ameliorate the problems caused by file sharing and soften the student outcry should they decide to block Kazaa traffic.
As for language tapes, there's already a library of cassettes no one bothers with anyway.
For great justice.
because MS would have the college signing an agreement stating that their "mPods" would be the only type of mp3 player allowed on campus, and students could only use them to interface with sanctioned MS products, and that MS would be supplying those products to the college on the condition that they buy into future upgrades at $LUDICROUS pricing scheme...
THERE you'd see the freshmen being forced by a big corporation to buy their products. But not in this story.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Let's see - evil technology used by evil P2P pirates who want to destroy society vs the federal government, RIAA and MPQA or whatever it is. Who wins?
Duke University - the next "compound in Waco"!
Oh, brother, not the "Apple stole Konfabulator" bullstuff again.
Read this, then try to defend your accusdation again with a straight face.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
Let's remember that having a monopoly is NOT illegal. It's only when you have a monopoly, AND abuse your monopoly position to block your competitors from competing, that IS illegal.
Microsoft was (rightly) accused and found guilty of the latter. I have yet to hear any reports that Apple is abusing their market leadership with the iPod.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
It wasn't about choosing integrity over money. Mike Krzyzewski simply used the leverage the Lakers offer gave him to consolidate his rule over Duke and make it that much tigher.
Not exactly necessary for mono spoken word. Ok if you're on campus, but not so great if you are off it without broadband.
[Trinity Class of '94]
At least you folks had network access in your dorm rooms.
In my day we were forced to use (shudder) the dial-up pool with all thirty-two 24Kbps modems! Seasoned liberally with sneakernet to and from the clusters.
Ah the heady days of the Information gravelly road.
Wow. I go to Iowa State and the out-of-staters have to pay non-resident tuition EVERY year. I thought most schools were like this. Consider yourself lucky that you still get two years of cheaper schooling.
How many Top Ramens, can you get for an iPod, when you're really hungry and brok?
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
One of my clients has a daughter at a private high school here in NYC that's doing the same thing. Language lessons as mp3s, file transfer and the like.
There's a lot of this kind of stuff going on. More power to the people coming up with it.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
Why would you switch schools if you have ADD? Think out your replys before posting you ingorant tool.
With Flash kits of course (to be able to give them as "educational items")
Agreed iowa has problems (EE Major and former CompUSA tech)
You have not been on a college campus recently, have you? I attend a top tier law school at night, with people who have graduated undergrad several years before attending, so it is an older student body...and still everyone plays around on their laptop and surfs the web while in class "taking notes." I have no doubt that younger students have even less of an attention span.
Why? I already spent time in New Jersey, going to Duke would have been redundant.
[KARMA]a man's character is his fate - Heraclitius[/KARMA]
How many goddamn times do we have to say it here? It's all about the fact that Microsoft is a Monopoly! In a competitive market for nonmonopolies, attempts at vendor lockin like this are annoying but not illegal. They are illegal for monopolies, and they are illegal for a reason! It's been explained ad nauseum here and I can't understand why people mod up these comments. You don't have to hate microsoft, but I would consider the average slashdot to understand monopoly law and the reasons behind it.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I don't know about Duke, but this is one of those stupid university stereotypes if you ask me. Everyone claims USC's only for the rich and spoiled, but over 90% of the student body was on either financial aid or scholarships.
So just because it's an expensive school, don't assume everyone is rich. I worked through college, and there were many more like me at my "Spoiled Children" school. Of course, some of my friends got brand new SUV's and sports cars and fun monthly trips to aspen. But then again, that was only about 10%.
...if you've ever seen a physically attractive girl giving a lecture about "beauty [being] on the inside"? No? Similarly, the only people who seem to think that this is an unwise move are precisely the folks who are not getting iPods. As a member of the class of '08 at Duke I can tell you that my friends and I are thrilled about getting new 4G iPods for free--even if we already own older but larger models and did pay 40k in tuition!
As a member of my high school's class of 2004, I got a Compaq iPaq handheld. Too bad that didn't turn out very well at all. The redneck kids at our school hated the crap out of them and threw them out bus windows, the "normal" kids kept breaking them by doing boneheaded things, and some geeks tried to overclock theirs. People were trading MP3's over IR across rooms, and there were IM convos going on in class. Furthermore, many of the teachers didn't even feel compelled to take advantage of the technology. Only a few tech-savvy students and staff members took advantage of the ability to browse the web over the school's new wi-fi network (now four years old). In the end, we all gave the handhelds back, and the things were packed in crates for the teachers who wanted to use them.
I loved mine and didn't want to let it go. It seems like the technology is only useful in the hands of people who want to eschew old tech and go new-school.
-Selling current third-gen 15 gig iPod to parents :-)
-Member of Duke University Class of 2008, double-majoring in ECE/BME
Life is good.
Hah, funny.
NC is the state that sends the most students to Duke (i think it was about 250 my year--about 1/7 of the class). Followed by California, Virginia, Florida, Georgria, Maryland, and Texas.
THEN Pennsylvania. Duke's really quite southern, as it is mandated to be.
It sounds great and I like it much more than the ipod (its a lot uglier though...and the interface is only tolerable) because of its versatility and recording.
Of course if all I wanted was a little box to listen to music, I would pay the extra for an ipod but, as it stands the 20GB was cheaper than the smallest ipod and preforms better.
Bottles.
I suddenly like school again.
To Live Is To Die.
If every student has an iPod, .PDF of the class notes,
they can login on campus,
download the
download the professors lecture,
and listen when they want to, and at a 25% speed increase over normal speech too...
Any questions? email the professor or stop
by during office hours.
Just show up to class only 4 times - for exams.
Why waste time with all that slow and boring going to class, dragging around the old monkey meat-bag to simply 'download' information (and at a slow baud rate)?
This project, take to its logical level, would allow a real campus to be run like a virtual campus, freeing up professors and students from wasting time in the classroom, allowing students more time to focus on Learning, not on note taking.
A fully deployed iPod enabled campus would be almost as nice as the on-line Universities.
(University of Phoenix, NOVA University, etc.)
As much as that is probably true, it's still an iPod, and I want an iPod (Though I'm not going to base my education on iPods nor do I think it's a necessity). On the other hand, I'd be really pissed if my school started handing them out because I'm not a freshman...
Get me a meat pie floater!
I'm glad someone pointed this out. My iRiver has a built in condenser mic and comes with an external mic that you can plug into the analog/optical line in jack. Even if Duke isn't going to provide audio content to students, having a microphone would enable students to record lectures and find other "innovative uses for technology." Oh, and my iRiver supports ogg. I don't think a university should tacitly promote the use of proprietary file formats. At least Duke is a private school.
Does Les Roches in Switzerland give notebook computers to all students?
you molested other boy scounts, tevis money. people know you fondle little boys.
you are a disgusting rapist.
you fuck the asses of animals, boys, men and your father.
fuck you tevis money, you rape in the suburbs of new york state, we wont forget.
boy scout raper.
Hey, thanks for that URL. I didn't know it existed, but I was referring to:
a ku .html
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/toppage/program_index/gog
These are excellent language courses for Japanese speakers trying to learn some other language, such as Chinese or Korean. I already speak Japanese well enough to be able to learn other languages via courses taught in Japanese, so I can use them too, but they are only broadcast in Japan. And even in Japan, if you miss the live half-hour broadcast on AM radio, you're out of luck. (Well, unless you subscribe to cable radio, which rebroadcasts them.)
Though these wouldn't be of much use to most of the English speaking world, they are examples of the type of content that would make great MP3 downloads.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."