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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."
Good to see they included the Belkin voice recorders with these, though I wonder why they didn't go with iTalks instead.
1 minute of voice recording on the iPod takes just one meg, so you could probably keep an entire semester's worth of lectures on an iPod.
And that is actualy a good idea. I would have liked to be able to give my history students some lectures as mp3s and know that they would be able to listen to them - no excuses.
As a historian I would love to put selected historical speeches and radio recordings there. I can imagine that it would be great way for folklorists to give their students access to recordings of folk music and folk tales. Some of this is copyrighted material so you can't just put it up on the web.
You could put a schedule of official events in the iPod calendar so that the students woulld have that easily accesible, and you could put all kinds of useful info an tips in the note section. Not to mention important contact information in the address book. And by putting it on something as hip as the iPod you increase the likelyhood that the students will actually bother to use it.
This brings up an interesting issue. Is Duke University actually encouraging/allowing their students to record lectures? I know that this is a reasonably big deal in the UK where, as far as I know, it is illegal; meaning that before recording, consent has to be asked of each individual lecturer. Many of the lecturers I know do not like the practice of students recording lectures for various reasons including:
1) They own the IP of their own lectures
2) Students tend to be easier distracted when they know (or at least think) that they will listen to the lecture again
3) The audio is only a small part of a whole presentation which includes writing on the blackboard, overheads etc.
Anyway, it seems a little strange to me that American universities are encouraging this so openly.
Why so? You might not be prepared to do it, but don't assume everyone is like you.
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.
And believe it or not, some people like to learn.
At the moment iPod's are a fad.
Just like the Walkman, and the portable cassette player before it, and the non-portable reel to reel before that, and the wire recording machine before that. Having the facility to playback audio in the most convenient way will never go out of fashion. - But perhaps you meant it's a fad to use them in education. But there was a language lab when I was at school, filled with tape recorders. And when I did my degree some of the material was handed out on cassette tape. So it's not even an idea without precursors there either.
But if that's the idea the university had, they're insane and it won't work. Whenever anything new is about to happen there are always naysayers that predict it will fail. It's better to say, "But we don't progress unless someone tries it and reports back."
BTW, You have a very low bar on your use of the word insane. I've met insane people, and they think up far weirder shit than using iPods in education I can assure you.
Well, as a teaching assistant at Duke, I speculatethere are three main reasons this was done. First, despite a successful recent campaign, the University is broke. Now, the Med school, the Buisness school, the Graduate school, and the Engineering school are fine, but the general fund is rumored to be dry. Publicity stunts like this might be trying to recruit more students so the school can make some extra cash on tuition. Second, I think those responsible for the technology fund this came out of are so out of touch that they thought iPods could reduce the rate of music piracy at Duke via ITMS. Concern about University liability is rising. Third, iPods are pretty good firewire drives. If the computer labs are setup properly, this could be an easy way to allow students to port data around campus.
Of course, Duke's campus is wooded and relatively dark at night. The rates of violent crimes (sexual and otherwise) against students are fairly high. Giving the freshmen "mug me" earphones won't help.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Because they are experimenting with a new tool for learning.
I bought an iPod right before my senior year in college and let me tell you, that thing was great for my film music class! We had to listen to songs from somewhere from 50-100 CDs during the term and had to know them pretty well for the mid-term and final. We weren't expected to own the CDs, but rather to go to the Music Library and listen to them there (the library lets you check them out one at a time for up to 2 hours each to listen to in the library CD players, or your own, if you have one, but the disc can't leave the library).
I was able to put all the music for my class onto one (very long) playlist at the beginning of each half of the term and would just listen to it in my free time and while doing other homework. I honestly think my iPod made a big difference in my studying for that particular class.