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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!"
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. . . 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?"
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).
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.
Sounds like the proctors were doing their job.
Anybody fooling with any object other than a pencil and the test booklet in the SAT room should be summarily dismissed and fined.
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.
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.
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.
Now that that's out of your system, let me assure you that while many were attracted to the iPod's pop-culture cult status as a part of this project, the academic and educational uses were the primary discussion. The "ooh, pretty!" factor, as you call it, was taken into consideration so the students would actually want to use the device given to them. Imagine Duke giving every student a Palm Zire...which most students would promptly toss in their desk after a month of occasional use if their classes didn't require it--most still won't, btw. But an iPod...the students will love those and use them!
I don't know who your friend is--I have some ideas--but if the "wow" factor is his explanation, he fell asleep at a few of the briefings, methinks. Take my word for it.
As for NACHOS....I didn't like it any more than you did, but many factors prevent 110 and 210 from switching to other options...I'd rather not rock the boat in the CS Dept right now.
Face it folks - the iPod (or any large audio player) has massive potential on campus. I've been trying to get my campus to pursue something like this for a while:
Special version of iTunes, that links into the university's library. Using your ID and password, it returns all of the lectures you are a part of and allows you to download them. Taking a humanities class concerning Candide? Download it. History class talking about FDR's fireside chats? Download them. Tired of floppies that are still cluttering up your PC labs (until this very day - arrrrrrggghhhh!)? Let the kids save to the iPod.
The iPod just becomes the central repository for things that, until now, were spread out across the dorm room. If the kid loses it, the kid loses it - same could be said about anything else (books, tapes, DVDs, etc.).
The only application that I don't think will work: audiobooks. It's really difficult to study from an audiobook. Even more difficult to use an audiobook in an open-book test, too...