iPods: Not Just for Music Anymore - Other University Projects
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Duke University is far from the only college getting on the iPod bandwagon. Stanford started an initiative this year called Stanford on iTunes. The project offers users access to a wide range of Stanford-related digital audio content via Apple’s iTunes store. It includes a public site that features Stanford courses, faculty lectures, music, and even college football games. The access-restricted site for Stanford faculty and students includes course-based materials.
The University of Washington started a pilot project in late 2005 to podcast lectures in three classes. Formerly, lectures had been regularly videotaped for student viewing, but students could only view the videos in the library. Podcasts are far more portable. A check of the current list of podcast lectures available shows a range of topics, including biology, chemistry (both general and organic), project management, computer programming, history, psychology, and more.
Viewing lectures is a common way to take advantage of the iPod in education. York University in Toronto just recently began helping its students study on the go with video lectures viewable through iPods. Students can subscribe to RSS feeds for their classes, and receive not only the lectures, but handouts formatted as PDF files. Interestingly, while some lecture podcasts are intended to supplement rather than replace attending classes, at least one of the courses at York is delivered entirely online in the form of video podcasts. The final exam is still handled in person.
Drexel University handed out iPods to the 30 students that joined the college’s education program in September 2005. The students were given microphones with their iPods to record study group sessions and interviews. They were also expected to record audio blogs during the semester they would spend working off campus. Checking out Drexel’s PodPage reveals a modest number of podcasts as well. The iPod experiment was intended not only to capture the interest of the students, but also to encourage the students “to develop their own ideas for incorporating the technology into teaching,” according to an article about the initiative that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Mercer University is another college focused on using the iPod with its education students, and is finding it possible to do things with the iPod that would be difficult otherwise. For example, one class can download videos of their professor acting as an elementary school teacher to give them a better understanding of various teaching strategies. The class itself never meets as a group.
Sometimes it’s the little things that help. Fitchburg State College distributed emails to all the applicants it accepted for the fall semester of 2006 with a link to a podcast. The purpose of the podcast was to ease the college into using podcasts for educational purposes. Traditional notifications via postal mail were still sent out.
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