“Duke University freshmen are using their school-issued iPods to learn Spanish vocabulary, recording lectures, analyzing music, and – no surprise here – for downloading their favorite tunes. About 1,650 freshmen were given the iPods in August at cost of about $500,000 to the school. The devices are theirs to keep as long as they hang onto them through the end of the school year,’ The Associated Press reports.
“As an accessory to the iPods, Duke handed out microphone recording modules made and donated by the Belkin Corp. The program is costing the university about $500,000 for the devices and additional equipment and support staff time. Duke is evaluating the pilot project, and a report is due next month. By late March or early April, the university will decide whether to continue the program in some form with a new crop of freshmen next year, said Lynne O’Brien, director of the Duke Center for Instructional Technology, which is overseeing the experiment,” AP reports. “‘It’s going very well,’ O’Brien said.”
“The iPods have been used mostly for recording lectures and interviews and replaying them on the go. Other academic uses include analyzing music, not only in a music theory course but also in engineering labs, which examined music from the standpoint of its sound properties,” AP reports. “Widespread publicity about the program has prompted queries from textbook publishers, who might include more audio material with their print offerings as a result.”
Full article here.
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