iPod Fever

It's catching! Drexel gives iPods to its education majors...

Students entering the School of Education at Drexel University this
fall will receive iPods as part of a program to explore and evaluate
the educational potential of the devices. Duke University launched a
similar program last fall, distributing iPods to all 1,650 of its
incoming freshmen. The program at Drexel, however, is much smaller in
scope, with about 30 students expected to enter the School of Education
in the fall. Some have criticized such programs as gimmicks that are
unlikely to produce valuable educational results, and officials
involved in the programs acknowledge the risk that students will simply
use the devices to listen to music. Drexel officials said part of the
university's program is to solicit feedback from students about how
the devices could be put to good use educationally. Students will
receive microphones to record interviews and other meetings, and the
university will request that the students use the iPods to create
"audio Web logs" during a required semester of off-campus work. Drexel
will also experiment with podcasting, a process in which iPod owners
can download audio files, such as news announcements or lectures from
professors, and listen to them at their convenience.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 2 March 2005
http://chronicle.com/free/2005/03/2005030203n.htm