Not sure I buy this, but who knows? The article, IPod Program Did Not Deliver seemed a bit biased and to tell you the truth, I couldn’t even find an author listed. I am part of the Apple Digital Campus (along with Duke, Stanford, Ohio State, and Missouri School of Journalism) and the Duke Freshman iPod Experience was a key piece to that. I’ve listened to the Duke administrators who described the project … not ever really defending it — they said from the get go that this was a pilot. But, they all seemed very excited about the progress.

It surprises me with these results that Drexel University in Philadelphia is giving education grad students iPod photos … here’s a little bit about that project. A quickie:

The Drexel University School of Education, following in Duke University’s footsteps, will distribute free Apple iPods to incoming students next fall in an attempt to integrate technology into teaching.

“A focus for us,” Drexel’s School of Education Director William Lynch said, “is on bringing technology to [solve] human problems and … increasing human understanding through the use of technology.”

Its interesting to me that this news about the Duke project would come out of Mac News World and not be first released via Duke. I do know that Duke is in the midsts of a large assessment … that should be more accurate. At any rate, I may revisit this post later today when I have more time to think about it, but this seems like nothing more than a knee jerk reaction and an incomplete one at that.

When it came out a couple of weeks ago I was impressed, but not knocked over by it … a small, inexpensive mp3 player will do well in the market, I thought. Obviously Apple knows what they are doing in this space, so I didn’t bother yapping about the lack of a screen and $150.00 price tag, but at the same time I just thought it was interesting … of course I then bought one. I bought one mainly because I have this disease that requires me to own almost one of everything Apple makes … at any rate, I have a shuffle and it is a very cool device — for a lot of reasons.

What I like the most about it is that it gives us a chance to put them in the hands of students. I look around PSU and it seems all I see are white earbuds … its like my wife said this morning, “I notice non-white earbuds now … it used to be that I was impressed to see a couple of white ones around, but now they are everywhere and the non white ones stand out.” Its hit the mainstream … but it isn’t like I am at Duke and can rely on my students to have them for podcasting, lectures on mp3, or audiobooks … but with the shuffle, my College, if I made enough noise, could afford them for all the students in a given class — or better yet, they are actually in the textbook price range now, so you could in effect require an iPod.

What prompted this quick post was this article in Wired today, Library Shuffles Its Collection … talks about how a library is now loaning audiobooks out on iPod shuffles … great idea. And here’s the best part:

In addition, the library has the potential to save a great deal of money. Latini said that most titles on CDs cost the library around $75, whereas in MP3 format, they range from $15 to $25.

“In the end, obviously, we’re literally saving money,” he said. “The units are paying for themselves.”

I think my students would love that … but there are the results from the blog survey to consider … we asked them if they liked the idea of audio posts … well, let’s just say the idea didn’t thrill them. I’ll throw some more slides up about that one later. At any rate, technology is becoming more affordable and the opportunities are there to take advantage of it. And I know my students would love to be “required” to buy an iPod.