Students Get iPods as Study Aids

WIAKywbfatw writes "Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Georgia has given iPod digital music players to its students to help them with their coursework, as reported by BBC News. Apple donated about 50 iPods as part of an experimental project to illustrate creative uses for the machine, and University professors say the gadgets have helped the students think more critically about their Gothic Imagination course." I wonder if I can write off my new iPod as an education expense.

Audio books?

[Chairboy]

Could an MP3 player be considered a study aid if perhaps it were to be filled with Audio Books?

A previous story about the Kalishnikov ammo magazine MP3 player led me to http://www.audiobooksforfree.com, a website that has a bunch of books in MP3 format.

Most Colleges

[Anonymous Coward]

Most colleges claim that lectures are copyright by whomever is giving the lecture. That is, if your professor gives a lecture, the professor owns the lecture and you are not allowed to duplicate it without permission. Most also have policies mandating permission to record be given for people who have physical disabilities (such as deafness) that would prevent them from learning the material by hearing it a single time.

I'm interested to hear what Slashdottians think about this. It does cause obvious problems with using Ipods as study aids!

They don't say...

[mental_telepathy]

But I would guess they are getting the phased out 5GB models. A little oversotck magically turned into good PR and some word of mouth sales.

Cost vs. Benefit?

[frinkster]

Sounds like the iPod would actually be useful as part of the coursework, but is that benefit really outweighing the cost?

Apple donated the first batch, but they aren't going to keep doing that. Someone has to pay for them at some point.

I don't get it...

[jonfelder]

I'm not sure I really see much of a point here. The iPod is a cool gadget and all (I own one in fact), but even after reading the article I don't see the benefit.

The article mentioned that not all people have broadband at home so they can't necessarily download the files easily. Isn't this what campus computer labs are for? Students could just listen to the audio there. You could use usb keys for a fraction of the price and just download the audio files to them. CDRWs would be cheaper still and you could write the audio tracks directly to them.

It would seem to me, that at $500 a piece you could give the students desktops or even laptops. Sure, they aren't as portable or cool as an iPod, but they'll play music along with having many other capabilities.

Already in use at BGSU...

[heldlikesound]

While not distributed by the school, each Mac has a firewire cable coming out the back that ends attached to the front of the machine. This way students can use their iPods (or other firewire drives) to move large video or graphic files from machine to machine. I wouldn't reccomend actually working off of the iPod for reasons of heat, and simply the fact that they aren't really made for that kind of abuse. However, for moving large files, they are great.

Oh, yeah, and they hold about 10,000 songs too. That's pretty cool.

Knowing Apple...

[haaz]

...it won't happen. They're very tight about what information they release. And even then, it's often done under NDAs. Ferinstance, I recall from my LinuxPPC days the great lengths an honest developer would have to go to get documentation on a chip used in Mac hardware. And just because OS X has BSD at its core doesn't mean Apple's any more open with anything else. Proprietary thinking is still very much in the house, despite their partial embrace of open source software and open standards.

That said, there's no reason the iPod couldn't be hacked, as seems to be happening. (It's not encrypted in any way (that I know of), and therefore not under the guard of the DMCA.) But it would be quite good for Apple to open up just a little bit more.

Education

[ahkbarr]

Honestly, it's amazing the kind of crap people think they need in order to learn. I can barely get equipment necessary to do my job (yes, I am not a sheltered student who hasn't yet seen the real world).

Doesn't it make sense to think universities should be trying to make education less expensive rather than making excuses to make it more expensive? Costs cannot rise faster than inflation forever. Lack of access to education is what really keeps the poor poor, widens the class gap, yadda yadda.

This kind of shit pisses me off. I'm working right now getting $0.00 per hour, retraining, etc. I'm working to make myself valuable again, not even getting unemployment. I don't get ANY sort of $$ right now [not since december], and schools are pissing and moaning to ME about how they need $$.

Bottom line, the iPod is unnecessary, you pimple faced all-night-gamer fuck leach.

Re:High tech tools for education.

[Fred IV]

Ugh, feature creep. No offense, but most of the appeal of the iPod is that it is small, lightweight, has decent battery life, and does one thing really well.

By the time all that was added, you wouldn't have an iPod anymore, you would have a sub-notebook.

Re:Whoopty doo

[nudicle]

If your point is that a lot of technological innovations don't seem to improve education much and turn out to be a much-hyped waste of money, then fair enough. If your point is that this is an example of liberal-arts institutions wasting money, then I'd point out that the iPods were donated by the private sector and no liberal arts institutions were harmed by the creation of this experiment. -nudicle

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

It would seem to me, that at $500 a piece you could give the students desktops or even laptops.

They don't cost Apple $500 apiece, and they didn't cost the school anything.

Re:Whoopty doo

[Black Perl]

How much money do you suppose the students wasted on the free iPods that they were given (and that were donated by Apple)?

The students? None. Apple's the one wasting the money here.

If they had given the iPods to an Embedded Systems class at MIT, and challenged them to find "creative uses" for them, I'm sure we'd see a lot of newsworthy (at least Slashdot-worthy) things. But I doubt this class will find "uses" that we'd give a hoot about.

Re:Creative uses?

[DavidinAla]

That's like saying that you don't see the use of someone getting a Honda unless you can change the software that controls the car's computer.

If you want to market an MP3 player that uses Linux or some other free OS, more power to you. But to say what you're saying is just blind zealotry. Personally, I don't see a lot of use for an iPod in education (and I say that as a happy iPod owner), but it has nothing to do with religious reasons such as whether it's running an open source OS.

David

Write it off as a portable backup device

[pvera]

I always use about 1GB out of my 5GB iPod to do backups of my home folder. It is much faster than transferring the files to a network server that is in the tape backups schedule. THAT is business usage and can be written-off.

iPod as an external HD

[Anonymous Coward]

I got my company to pay for my iPod, since I use it also as an external HD. That's what it was bought for, the MP3-player is just an added bonus =)

Re:Education

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been jealous before too but then I realized that I would be happier if I was happy for the good fortune of others. Now I even wish for others to have good fortune.

These students aren't responsible for your economic situation so don't take it out on them.

Re:Creative uses?

[DavidinAla]

Even though I agree with the contention that it might not be the best use of educational dollars (to use iPods in college classes), your answer makes me suspect you didn't spend too much time in liberal arts classes. :-)

There are plenty of creative uses that can be made of almost any device -- besides writing software. Whether the benefits outweigh the disadvantages is a different issue, and we might be in agreement on that point, but for differing reasons.

David

Re:Cost vs. Benefit?

[KiahZero]

And then there are those of us that earned scholarships and yet aren't bitter about it.

These are pampered rich kids taking a bullshit course called "Gothic Imagination".

This is a public school in Georgia. Last I heard, Georgia has a policy that any students that graduate high school with a B+ average get scholarships to in-state schools. So I'm sure that it's just *packed* with snobby rich kids who wipe their ass with money.

Especially since the school is so damn expensive. I know I wouldn't be able to afford out-of-state tuition. $5,484 a semester [gcsu.edu]. I don't know what you were expecting, but that's fucking low for tuition. So to rack up the kind of bills you claim 'daddy' would have to pay, he or she would have to take 5 years.

Nevermind the fact that you don't know what the fuck they're studying. For all you know, this 'Gothic Imagination' class could be an Art History / Conservation class.

It pisses me off that I busted my ass for a scholarship, and then to pay back student loans, when the shools give the same degree and preferential treatment to mentally deficient trust fund babies because they're the ones who can donate to the alumni fund down the road.

Good for you; you got a scholarship. Instead of being grateful to whatever organization gave it to you (I won't assume that it was the school), you instead get mad at people who, by an accident of birth, happened to have rich parents. What do you expect? I'm all for dissing the rich, but seriously - what do you want? Should rich people be banned from higher education because they don't have to earn scholarships to get into school?

Bah. Higher learning my ass. What a waste of time and money University was.

So you're actually not bitter that other people didn't have to pay, but are just having a bit of buyer's remorse?

Re:Write it off as a portable backup device

[alienw]

I would pay money to see you explain that to the IRS, Mr. I-am-not-a-lawyer-but-I-play-one-on-Slashdot.

"no, look I use this expensive music player to store my secret business formulas. Why is there music on it? So nobody finds the trade secrets. Did you say something about a fine? I don't think I quite understand what you're saying there, mr. agent. What are back taxes now?"

Just remember, people: never trust slashdot tax lawyers.