Duke University Students Receive iPods

DSLAMngu writes "Freshman students at Duke University received their complimentary/paid for (however you want to look at it) iPod portable music players on Thurday. This deal was previously mentioned on /. here. After waiting in line, I eventually got my Duke-engraved iPod at about 9:00 PM with the rest of the freshmen at Brown dorm. I've written about the experience at my blog, and also included a copy of the Program Agreement and some photos of what the students received."

Comments

Re:Blog web design

[dan dan the dna man]

A good excuse not to RTFA in my opinion :) Not that anyone does. Actually not that I did after being assaulted aurally and visually with that.

Why?

[aussie_a]

My first response was WHY would anyone want this (not including students)? Then it hit me. Apple wants it because 1. They've made a profit. 2. If this catches on they can tap into people they otherwise wouldn't have. The university wants it because now they can say to future people considering which university to go to "look our cool and high-tech we are." Win-win for everyone.

Re:Why?

[BasilBrush]

Because they are experimenting with a new tool for learning. Maybe they'll get lots of worthwhile educational use out of it and they'll do it again, and other universities might follow them. Maybe it'll turn out to be a flop and it'll be the only year it's tried.

Don't think an iPod can be a tool for learning? How many song lyrics do you know reasonably well? Tens, hundreds, thousands? Why is that? Partly because the rhythm and meter of the music forms a repetitive framework in which you can fit the words. But mainly because you listen to ones you like over and over again.

Hey, 10 years ago I was doing a degree with the Open University in England - which is a distance learning setup. And part of the package was audio tapes.

Maybe Duke will manage to harness this potential for learning through hearing repeatedly, maybe they won't. But we don't progress unless someone tries it and reports back. (That could be a motto for slashdot!)

Re:Why?

[aussie_a]

Don't think an iPod can be a tool for learning? How many song lyrics do you know reasonably well? Tens, hundreds, thousands? Why is that? Partly because the rhythm and meter of the music forms a repetitive framework in which you can fit the words. But mainly because you listen to ones you like over and over again.

If your logic is people will listen to lecture notes again and again I figure perhaps you need to be modded funny?

I can see how you would come to that idea, but people listen to songs again and again because they like the music, not because they have an iPod. At the moment iPod's are a fad. But if that's the idea the university had, they're insane and it won't work.

Re:Why?

[Ubergrendle]

I would rather have the university subsidize my textbooks rather than get an iPod.

Don't delude yourself into a second into not thinking that this is self-serving on both Apple's and Duke's part... the students are consumers of both of their services.

Re:Why?

[tmortn]

Whats so odd about the idea students might choose to listen to lectures over and over again ?

They read over lecture notes over and over and over again, they even read other peoples lecture notes in case they think they missed something. If you have the option to actually listen to the source of your notes to double check them and help with learning the material better then why wouldn't you?

This is not a suggestion that they will listen to them to relax or instead of music. This becomes a hell of a study aide and overall educational resource.

Granted I am talking about reasonably good students at least somewhat dedicated to learning. But That consists of most of the students on the path to graduation.

In addition now if you miss class and someone has the lecture on IPOD you can now have a peer to peer sharing of all class lectures taking place on campus and the collective storage of a freshman class equiped with at a minimum an IPOD. Most of who are determined to get the best grades with the least amount of work.

If you throw in decent mpeg 4 video recording you then concievably have fricken TIVO for college classes at Duke.

Its genius. And the best part is Students will be self motivated to do it. I could easily see a group of friends creating a designated person for each class to record.. then if they put it on a p2p system viola, whole campus or more importantly everyone that takes that class has access to it.

Throw in wireless on board P2P in an IPOD form factor also accessible by laptops etc... and you have a very interesting development.

Additionally is DUKE going to place restirctions on sharing lectures to the outside world? Theoretically someone motivated to learn with access to p2p could now purchase books ( or even use open source textbooks where available ) and follow along with class lectures etc from p2p sources. Throw in an open accesible blog with collaborative study discussions and viola, open source free ( as in beer ) audit education from one of the more elite private institutions in the US.

so what..

[Pidder]

So what if they received their iPod. In one way or another they will pay for it in their tuition fee.

The significance

[scum-e-bag]

Sorry, but I still fail to see the significance of this story. What makes a small bunch of kids getting an iPod for free significant.

Could it be possible that the kids are being used as unsuspecting testers, to see what hacks they can come up with to beat copyprotection, or could it be to see what new, unsuspecting, unthought of and marketable ideas that come out of using it in ways that it was not originally intended for.

Re:The significance

[gl4ss]

just give 'em in mp3.. then tell them to listen to them in the universitys computer labs or wherever if they don't have equipment of their own.

I don't really see tha much difference in giving them some pdf's or giving them lectures in mp3(pdf's can be printed, mp3's burnt on a cd).

"Some of this is copyrighted material so you can't just put it up on the web." - but you can just copy them to students then? there's some huge difference here? (especially when intranet would be the easiest way to distribute those mp3's to the students regardless of what the students will use to listen them)

sadly this just boils down into a publicity event(for the said uni and apple) - nothing to do with the schooling itself.

Re:The significance

[BasilBrush]

I don't really see tha much difference in giving them some pdf's or giving them lectures in mp3(pdf's can be printed, mp3's burnt on a cd). Because you can listen to an iPod in No Extra Time. Going for a walk, waiting for a bus, driving, drinking a coffee, fishing, whilst going to sleep (most lectures would actually speed that up.) You'll probably pick up more with a few NET playings of a lecture.mp3 than siting down and concentrating on a lecture.pdf once - as most would do.

Re:Blog web design

[Anonymous Coward]

wasn't much of a surprise when i saw that he was asian

Re:Blog web design

[Ba3r]

i surf on an olde Toshbia portege 3110ct.. which its 300mhz p2 and 128mb ram usually are able to keep pace with even some of the more modern bloated webpages (fedora, firefox, and icewm of course!), but ..

.. as soon as i loaded that monstrosity the fan kicked on, all the little status-o-meters in my taskbar went from Catskills to Himalayas, and the dazzling lights sent my eyes into a panic!

sigh.. i suppose i should expect this from a kid born in (2004-18...mind still numb from flashing gifs... ) 1986!

Keep the sound to you, webmaster from hell

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? Awful music playing at full volume on a blog webpage, and no glaringly obvious way to turn it off? Is this a practical joke on the Slashdot audience or do you really expect people to read that hellhole of a page?

Lectures as MP3?

[bhima]

Will the lectures be available as MP3?

Otherwise what's the point?

I'm surprised at Duke's admissions standards.

[tiktokfx]

How did someone who could create that monstrosity of a log style be honestly evaluated as a suitable candidate for acceptance at Duke?

So which is first

[Anonymous Coward]

So which is first, they fail out of Duke, or the 18-month unreplaceable battery in the ipod dies?

So halfway through second year, all these suckers.. err students are going to have to go out and buy new ipods to stay in school? What an awesome plan.

Re:Another milestone for the INTERNET

[CrankyFool]

By that logic, a story along the lines of "All college students now required to learn Python" can be dismissed with "Oh, big deal. I know Python. So does my friend, Joe."

Among other things, Slashdot focuses on cool tech toys. Not so long ago, people looked at the iPod and said "you want *HOW* much for it? You're insane. It'll never sell." Then people said "well, it's definitely cool, but only very rich people who really want to look cool will get it." Apple has an image of being _THE_ boutique place. It's meaningful (to me at least) that we're getting to the point where iPods are so ubiquitous that we're starting to see large[ish] organizations bundling them with a 'standard offering' (as in this case: "Here's how much a degree and an iPod will cost you; you can't have the former without the latter").

wake forest=#1 cool tech toys in acc

[defective_warthog]

Incoming Wakies get think pads. 2008 specs
Now that's cool...

iPod your DUKE!

[autopr0n]

Wow, this is just absolutly facinating for people who are not freshman at Duke Univ. It dosn't sound like more needless iPod promotion on /. Nope, not at all.

eBay

[ka55ad]

I just checked ebay and I am surprised that I haven't found any "Limited Edition Duke iPod's" for sale yet.

Bad idea

[kitzilla]

Okay, I'll be the Luddite here. Flame away and mod me down.

First, I love digital music and have my entire library in iTunes.

Duke's iPod program is a stupid idea. It's a recruitment perk with little legitimate educational value.

If Duke thinks Mr. Undergrad is going to be listening to Professor Flatulent's geology lecture while out jogging instead of paging through their Audioslave tracks, they've got another thing coming. If they believe Miss Undergrad will be up late studying, rather than melting the university's WAN swapping MP3s, Duke is in for a rude awakening.

Virtually all Duke students will have their own PCs. If the school wants to distribute MP3 instruction or event calendars, there's already an infrastructure to support it.

There are plenty of kids who can't even afford the tuition for community college (thank you, Mr. Bush). The price of an iPod would cover 3 semester hours at most of these institutions. If Duke really wants to do something to improve their campus' test scores, they should put a couple dozen kids who can't afford their University into a year's community college and offer scholarships to those who really distinguish themselves.

What's next? University supplied Gameboys?

Re:Blog web design

[R.Mo_Robert]

If you think your mind is numb from the animated GIFs, whatever you do, don't to a View > Page Source! The first tag is a ... a ... TABLE!

(Yes, that's right, there's supposedly a table before even the opening HTML tag.)

accounting firm did similer thing

[Anonymous Coward]

The accounting firm that I work for in Canada did a similar thing. We've had a good year so far, so they gave the 1,000 people in our Toronto offices ipods. Everyone, professional staff, secretaries, IT folk, and even the summer students who are only here for a couple of months.

Good karma at the office.

The challenge is for the current IT staff. We have a standardized desktop, of which iTunes isn't a component. The firewall blocks CDDB lookups and P2P file sharing. So it's really for "home use only". I know some who don't have home computers. Complained to IT "what, I have to buy a $1,000 computer to enjoy this ?!"

I know others who grumbled "I'd rather have the cash". ("Hey idiot, there's this thing called eBay ...")

Always a few wrinkles when you try to do something nice. I'm all for companies or schools getting ordinary people interested in technology with little toys. Makes us geeks even more in demand. ;)

Andrew

Re:You're in college now

[GregChant]

Try to think less about "blogging" and iPods, and more about "female" things, mmmkay?

Well, chicks dig iPods, do they not?

As a general rule, technology, tools, and automobiles don't really interest chicks, unless they are conspicuous symbols of wealth, which clicks a biological imperative relating to the supportability of her and her offspring. Chicks do dig jewelry and clothes, but see above about the biological imperative.

Man, talk about the blind leading the dumb leading the stupid leading the delusional. It's not a social experiment, people.