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SPECIAL DOUBLE FEATURE! Academic MP3s >> Is It iTime Yet?
2/28/2006
iLove
“I love my iPod, and I couldn’t live without it,” says Jill Albano, a freshman member of a GC&SU chorus. “We’re singing in Korean, Portuguese, and many other languages. Professors and students who speak those languages at the school came in to do recordings to teach us the languages that we’re singing in. Now we can listen to the diction, and make sure that we’re pronouncing everything correctly.”
Review and create. Playback and portability are not the only reasons for the device’s popularity. Capability and creativity are high on the list. “The ease and accessibility of the iPod and its tools have really boosted my confidence in what I’m capable of as a student,” explains Christian Barner, a GC&SU Education grad student.
“They enable me to create projects and to do things that I really didn’t think were possible before. One of my projects involves using my iPod to record students and teachers talking about what makes a good teacher, and it will be presented at a conference of English teachers. I spent a few hours with the iMovie software and was immediately able to make something that I feel confident in presenting to a conference.”
Fellow graduate student Stephen Kirkley has been impressed by how little it took to get his iPod skills up to speed. “Most of us have gone from little to no experience to where we are editing voice and .wav files within an hour or so, with only brief instruction,” he says. “The experience that we’re getting now will really help us later on in our teaching.”
As a graduate student in education, working toward a teaching career, Barner has had the unique opportunity to see the iPod from both the student and teacher perspective. He explains, “From the teacher’s point of view, the iPod opens up possibilities. You can give the students choices: They can choose between an oral presentation, a written paper, or a project,” For one assignment, Barner created a radio program—something he’d never thought to do before—and found it “a very unique and fun way to show that I’ve learned information, that I have collected and processed data, and what it’s done for me.”
iQuestions
Attendance. Yet, though students are enthusiastic, questions about iPod use on campus still persist. “If the lecture is going to be available for downloading, why bother coming to class?” some professors ask. Moreover, that questions about copyright issues persist (even though some specific usages of copyrighted materials for educational purposes is permitted under the TEACH Act and other copyright law) shows that guidance is needed for curriculum development. Then too, lack of administrative and technical support for the iPod is another frequently cited problem. And campus naysayers worry that the iPod may be seen as more of a gimmick than a true pedagogical tool.
Still, GC&SU freshman Jill Albano d'esn’t see the iPod as a way to skip class. “I don’t think a podcast is a replacement for the class experience,” she says. A classmate, Tiffany Bishop, concurs. “Being seen in the classroom is important. The professors get to know your name, especially if it’s a smaller environment. They’re more willing to help you out when you go in and talk to them. The personal contact is really essential.”
While GC&SU professor Hank Edmondson uses recorded lectures to encourage study-abroad groups to take advantage of travel time on planes, etc., he has no objection to students using the iPod to record his on-campus lectures. “If you have an attendance policy, that takes care of the danger of having only one student in each class recording for everybody else,” he points out. John Fogelman, a freshman member of GC&SU’s “iVillagers” virtual community, also finds the iPod’s playback capability useful. Though he acknowledges that he is primarily a visual learner (needing to see and hear the lecture live), he adds that “After class, I still download the podcast of the lecture and discussion so that I can go over my notes as I listen to it.”
Copyright w'es. As for the concerns about copyright infringement, they can be handled in several ways, according to Jim Wolfgang, GC&SU’s CIO. “Under the TEACH Act, for example, you can use small clips of songs—you don’t have to buy them,” he says. (For more information on copyright law and the TEACH Act provisions, see www.usg.edu/admin/ legal/copyright.) “And if you want to use the whole piece, why not just have the students buy a copy? The songs are only 99 cents each. You can buy a lot of songs for what a textbook would cost. And over the years, the music may get used a lot more than the books, which are often sold back to the bookstore at the end of the class.” What’s more, because the school owns the iPods for some of GC&SU’s programs, it can make sure that all of the content on the iPods is legal when the students turn in their devices.
BECAUSE GC&SU OWNS the iPods for many of its programs, the school can ensure legal content.
Support problems. Lack of administrative and technical support can seriously limit the success of an iPod program, as Duke University’s report on its first-year experience noted. Others concur. “This stuff d'esn’t run itself,” comments GC&SU’s Edmondson. “It’s important that you don’t underestimate the challenge. Before you build a tower, be sure you’ve got the foundation to support it.”
Tech gimmick? Is the iPod just an attention-grabber? GC&SU’s Gormly says no. “Will it help recruit students?” she says. “Sure it will; toys help. But the iPod and its associated tools are much more than toys.” University of Dayton CIO Thomas Skill agrees, but sounds a cautionary note. “Podcasting certainly has a very relevant application in higher education, but it needs to be carefully integrated into the curriculum in a thoughtful way. My biggest fear is that faculty may think that they can make their class more hip by doing podcasting—and they may in fact do it, but the resulting class may not be any better.” Edmondson, too, emphasizes that while the iPod can enrich and facilitate an already good program, it won’t create it from nothing. “It’ll make it worse if you’re not ready for it. You can be a whiz technologically but shallow academically.”
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