Duke University Giving iPods To 1650 Freshmen 395
baptiste writes "Duke University has entered into an agreement with Apple to distribute iPods to all of the incoming freshmen this year - that's 1650 iPods! This agreement is part of an initiative to "encourage creative uses of technology in education and campus life" The iPods will have audio and text on them including special university content such as "faculty-provided course content, including language lessons, music, recorded lectures and audio books." Faculty will be assisted in creating new content for these devices by Duke's Center for Instructional Technology And here you thought iPods were just for music!"
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
oh please (Score:1, Insightful)
Same shit, different hardware.
It's not "free", it's all there in your tuition debt buddy...
Why not a PDA? (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, this way the university could save a truck load of money and give out a handheld that is way more capable than the iPod in running real applications, plus having the ability to play mp3s!
I think that some people who take such decisions are just not practical.
Hum... (Score:2, Insightful)
How much did that cost? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course the students end up paying for it anyway, in the "computer fees" that are usually tacked on to tuition.
damn, talk about "inducing piracy" (Score:1, Insightful)
(Yeah like I actually bought music in college..
cassette deck? check. Friends with lots of CDs to borrow?? check. eyepatch and parrot? check.)
This is pretty cool but I must agree with an earlier poster: wouldn't a PDA be more flexible and interesting? I could see students doing all kinds of stuff with a wireless PDA. with the iPod I see them listening to music in class. Woo hoo.
On the other hand, as an Apple shareholder I welcome the strength of the Apple brand to the duke campus! Woo hoo!
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I first heard this story in 1974 when I visited MIT, they publish an annual guide for freshmen and someone gave me one, that story was in it, supposedly it was true.
But anyway, I can just see this happening with the iPods. They should have given away the Belkin voice recorder gadgets with the iPods.
Oh come on... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh come on, give me a break... Sure they can be used for something else, in the same way that you can save any file you want on the iPod, but how many students are really going to use it that way?
WOW! Audio files that aren't music on my iPod. w00t!
I'm sure all the students will think this is great (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not a PDA? (Score:2, Insightful)
While this may seem weird (Score:5, Insightful)
Um... (Score:4, Insightful)
Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
This new move, however, is worrisome. It is clear that is scheme to "distribute" Ipods among Duke freshmen is nothing but a naked marketing move on Apple's part: sellng the already high-margin Ipods at a so-called "discount" to Duke under the thin pretext of using them as an educational device, then pushing Itunes, and relying on the soon-to-be-well-paid Duke graduates to keep buying Apple products in the future.
It is a shame that a fine institution Duke has gone in for such a blatant moneymaking gimmick. This is little different from allowing companies like Coca-Cola to produce "educational" material for our public schools. I would hope the Duke adminsistration would have taken a page from and choose integrity over money, but such is not to be. For shame. [msn.com]
Re:Upperclassmen (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:FREE! OH BOy! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:iPods ~ Cheating (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody fooling with any object other than a pencil and the test booklet in the SAT room should be summarily dismissed and fined.
Re:While this may seem weird (Score:1, Insightful)
Nice Idea, but how useful is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Many professors have still refused to adopt the internet as a way of getting information to students and Al Gore invented that over 10 years ago. Other than the CS classes and a few tech-savy professors elsewhere this won't even be attempted.
For those that do, It will take a long time for them to gather audio lectures and exactly how helpful are they without the visual aids behind them? The same is true for audio books. Technical audio books are not exactly the easiest way to learn a subject. The best use for audio books would be for literature, but as stated above, humanities professors are the ones least inclined to adopt this type of idea. Even then trying to learn the theme or symbolism from an audio book is quite hard. You can't flip back and forth as easily as you can with the written form.
My guess is that there will be a big craze and initial educational push as professors *try* to make the idea work, but after a month it will only be used by students to trade prOn and music before class starts or during lunch. Not that that's a bad thing. I am all for easier to access prOn, but for the majority the educational benefit is little.
Re:Man... (Score:1, Insightful)
Exactly. Saying that this is for educational / creative use is ridiculous. I would bet maybe 100 out of 1650 students are going to really utilize these new ideas, if that. It is purely a recruiting tool.
Re:Speaking of Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
There are many tactics which are perfectly acceptable when you own 5% of the market and which are not only unacceptable but illegal when you own 95% of the market.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not a PDA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that that's out of your system, let me assure you that while many were attracted to the iPod's pop-culture cult status as a part of this project, the academic and educational uses were the primary discussion. The "ooh, pretty!" factor, as you call it, was taken into consideration so the students would actually want to use the device given to them. Imagine Duke giving every student a Palm Zire...which most students would promptly toss in their desk after a month of occasional use if their classes didn't require it--most still won't, btw. But an iPod...the students will love those and use them!
I don't know who your friend is--I have some ideas--but if the "wow" factor is his explanation, he fell asleep at a few of the briefings, methinks. Take my word for it.
As for NACHOS....I didn't like it any more than you did, but many factors prevent 110 and 210 from switching to other options...I'd rather not rock the boat in the CS Dept right now.
Re:The cutting edge! (Score:5, Insightful)
Face it folks - the iPod (or any large audio player) has massive potential on campus. I've been trying to get my campus to pursue something like this for a while:
Special version of iTunes, that links into the university's library. Using your ID and password, it returns all of the lectures you are a part of and allows you to download them. Taking a humanities class concerning Candide? Download it. History class talking about FDR's fireside chats? Download them. Tired of floppies that are still cluttering up your PC labs (until this very day - arrrrrrggghhhh!)? Let the kids save to the iPod.
The iPod just becomes the central repository for things that, until now, were spread out across the dorm room. If the kid loses it, the kid loses it - same could be said about anything else (books, tapes, DVDs, etc.).
The only application that I don't think will work: audiobooks. It's really difficult to study from an audiobook. Even more difficult to use an audiobook in an open-book test, too...
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I would love to have these universities that are beginning to put courseware online start providing downloadable audio lecture files. (OGG or MP3 to make them as vendor-neutral as possible.)
If they value "broad, liberal education" so much and have such a hard time finding room for all the people who want to enroll, let them provide their history classes, foreign languages, music appreciation, philosophy, poli sci, etc., as downloadable audio courses that anyone can download and, to the extent possible, let those who want credit take a machine gradable test or series of tests so that attention from a live instructor is not needed.
A lot of classes couldn't be done this way (calculus, circuit analysis, etc.), but many could, and this is one way a university could enable engineering students (for ex.) to get more liberal arts and humanities without the need to double tuition and make the university ever tougher to get in to. And once they did the work to create these audio courses, they could let anyone (not just students) download them for just the marginal cost of additional bandwidth. They could then minimize even that cost by putting the material in the public domain and explicitly allowing P2P sharing.
(For that matter, I'd like to see organizations like the BBC, NPR, NHK, etc. start providing their archives in downloadable OGG or MP3 instead of just streaming RealAudio. NHK has terrific language courses available on the radio every day in Japan, but you have to live in Japan to hear them. As far as I know, you can't download them and that seems absurdly wasteful since they put so much work into creating them.)
Then, universities could require students to have portable audio players capable of playing MP3s & OGGs or provide them with one that can and serve more and better courses to more students with fewer faculty and staff and help reduce the outrageous rate of inflation in costs of higher ed.
To quote Fark.com (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Iowa State University students get something to (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why not a PDA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Slow down... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FREE! OH BOy! (Score:3, Insightful)
And I think they would've been much better off with mid-level PDA's with pre-loaded data (such as school events in the date book, campus hours in the memo pad, and maps of the campus). I think a freshman has more of a need to be organized than to listen to (even more) music. Besides, you could put solitaire on a PDA!
Re:In other news... (Score:2, Insightful)
at all UNC system schools (Duke included)
Everyone knows that Duke is the University of New Jersey at Durham.
I could get degrees from 5 UNC schools for the price of a Duke degree!
Re:FREE! OH BOy! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FREE! OH BOy! (Score:3, Insightful)
But no matter how many reports you refer us to, there is nothing phony about the fact that my state of Pennsylvania has a budget squeeze on its college and K-12 institutions due in large part to this President's reckless use of our funds, such as the trillions he has spent on tax cuts which - in my case - wiped out $850 in grants for college so I could receive a $300 tax refund. It makes a difference and education is a failure largely because of the decisions made in Washington, D.C.
Re:Why not a PDA? (Score:2, Insightful)
The reality is that while solutions are spilling over on slashdot, ordinary user exhibit A doesn't necessary want to know their IP or mess with their environment variables, they just want to read fark and print their homework on ePrint before class.