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iPods Valuable in the College Classroom?

Posted by timothy on from the pencils-considered-dangerous dept.

Infonaut writes "The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article called When iPod goes collegiate, examining the iPods for students program at Duke University. It seems that while many students and professors find them valuable for classwork, this is America, so questions about intellectual property rear their ugly head: "Do they have permission from the person who wrote the lectures to share it?" asks one IP attorney, referring to lectures recorded on iPods."

3 of 364 comments (clear)

  1. legal issues? by blew_fantom · · Score: 5, Informative

    when i took business law back in the day, the lecturer was a former chief prosecutor and had lots of experience. but if there was one policy he enforced, it was that we were NOT allowed to record his lectures. that sucked, since most of the test material was from his lectures. his stated reason was that because he will (and did) say controversial stuff, as well as mentioning specifics of certain cases (without naming names), if there was a recording of what he said out there, it *could* be used against him. it was his way of protecting himself. so i imagine in this day and age of mp3's and decentralized distribution, i can see how a) some professors could have a problem with their lectures free floating out there or b) see devices such as an iPod as the greatest invention since the typewriter in helping them teach...

  2. Re:Ummm by pokka · · Score: 5, Informative

    Did you read the article? Because it's not about "iPod against the machine" and it's not written controversially at all. In fact, the Christian Science Monitor - despite the name - is a very reputable, non-biased news source. The article is also fairly thorough - especially for a non-tech news source.

    The actual FA discusses why Duke thought it was a good idea to give iPods to students at all. The first question - why choose the iPod instead of a player with more function? The iPod requires additional accessories and hackery to do all the things that students want to use them for. Casual iPod users would find it difficult to share downloaded lectures, for example, because Apple makes sure that it's difficult to transfer files off of your iPod - protected or not.

    And secondly, is it really a good idea to give them away without really coming up with good uses for them? "Let's give everyone an iPod first, and figure out how to integrate it into our curricula later!" That's certainly what seems to have happened - and that's how students feel as well.

    If anyone's generating stupid publicity, it's Duke University. The article just tries to figure out what effect (if any) it has had on students and their learning and interaction methods.

  3. We at Duke agree by DSLAMngu · · Score: 5, Informative
    Overall, this is an extremely well-elaborated and accurate article. However, here are some links to what Duke's Chronicle has been saying, in case you were curious:

    iPod Experiment

    Duke iPod program to continue next year

    Also, you can go to The Chronicle and search the archives for "iPod" and get any number of negative student editorials on the topic. Basically, all of us at Duke agreed that the project was a marketing campaign, plain and simple; on the other hand, you won't see us complaining. We got free (as in, paid for by a fund accumulated from previous years) iPods, and next year's freshmen will get them if they take the appropriate classes.

    In addition, Carolina can go to hell. Go Devils :-P