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SPECIAL DOUBLE FEATURE! Academic MP3s >> Is It iTime Yet?

2/28/2006

By Mikael Blaisdell

Are campus educators and administrators prepared to make full use of the iPod’s educational potential? Our intrepid reporter gets the inside story from faculty, students, and administrators at three schools on the vanguard.

A student at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry gathers up her books and notes at the end of her class. After briefly stopping off at the dorm to grab her gym bag and update her Apple iPod (www.apple.com) with the campus server, she spends an hour on the exercise machine at the gym while reviewing the recorded lecture from the class she just completed…. On his way home from campus, a professor listens to a recent audio book offering, focused on his area of instruction. It plays through his car’s stereo from his iPod, and he can continue his review of the audio content at home…. Stumped by the illustrations in his textbook, a math student views a short clip on his video-enabled iPod and is able to better understand the effect of assigning a continuous value to a calculus formula for a function—all as he sips coffee at a campus hangout…. The iClassroom—wherever and whenever—is here. But while iContent might be quickly available at the touch of an iPod’s button, successful iEducation requires careful preparation and considerable effort on the part of both faculty and administrators.

iEverywhere

First announced in October of 2001, sales of the instantly popular little white iPod device topped 2 million in the first 90 days. In just over four years, Apple has sold more than 30 million iPods worldwide and 600 million songs have been purchased from the company’s iTunes online music store. According to market research firm NPD Group (www.npd.com), the iPod’s share of the explosively burgeoning market for portable electronic music players stood at 72 percent by the fall of 2005. Not long after its introduction into the consumer market, the first iPods began turning up on college campuses nationwide.

In the fall of 2004, Duke University (NC) gave iPods to all 1,650 members of its incoming freshman class. But even before that, Georgia College & State University (GC&SU) was among the very first campuses to put together an academic program using the iPods, when it launched a couple of pilot programs in 2002. Today, there are active iPod programs on many other campuses around the country, including those at Stanford University (CA), Drexel University (PA), University of Michigan, University of Dayton (OH), and Virginia Tech. More are being added all the time. In higher education, the popularity of the device has spread beyond the US; there is an iPod program at the Université Lumiére Lyon 2, in Lyon, France, for instance. And where there are no formal academic programs—yet—there are countless students making their own use of the iPods in their studies.

CURRENTLY, THERE ARE active iPod programs at U Michigan, Stanford, Drexel, and more schools weekly.

“The iPod has become a standard part of student dress,” notes Thomas Skill, CIO of the University of Dayton. Anne Gormly, VP & Dean of Faculty at Georgia College & State University, agrees. “iPods are common,” she says. “You see people all over campus walking around with these little white wires coming out of their ears.” At the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, Director of Dental Informatics Lynn Johnson reports that 65 percent of the students already own iPods, and make heavy use of them. “They like the mobility,” Johnson says. “Walking to class, working out, riding on the bus, sitting in the cafeteria; everywhere they want to go, the iPod g'es too.”

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