SAN FRANCISCO: Durham, North Carolina-based Duke University has decided to continue its scheme of providing iPod digital music players to its students this fall for academic use, but will do so in a rational and targeted manner.
While it had decided not to distribute iPods to all incoming freshmen this year, it will definitely offer the gadget to any student from freshmen to all class levels whose classes use them.
The university had last year given iPods to nearly 1600 first-year students, meeting the $500,000 cost from a special technology fund. This had forced other universities to adopt similar schemes.
Lynne O'Brien, Duke's project coordinator said: "One of the pleasant surprises was that the faculty had a lot more ideas about using them than we had initially thought. Our approach last year was to put it out there and see what people might be interested in doing."
The iPods had helped to broaden the use of technology in higher education. It motivated nearly 600 first-year students to enroll for at least one course that used the instrument. The courses were for music or a foreign language. The students used the instruments to record or receive audio files, to take notes and to conduct interviews, audio blogging or podcasting.
The university proposes to buy more than the 1,650 20-gigabyte iPods this year, but it would spend less. It said it is exploring ways to expand the mix of technology and education with devices that have video, digital imaging and wireless communication facilities.
