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I'm Bob Doughty with the VOA Special English Education Report.
A year ago, we told you about an experiment at Duke University in North Carolina. The university gave each first year student an iPod from Apple computer. More than 1600 students received one last August. Apple iPods are small digital players most commonly used for music. But the ones at Duke also came with the voice recorder. University officials wanted to know how students and professors would put iPods to educational use.
Now Duke researchers from the center for instructional technology have reported the results of the experiment. In all about 50 classes with the total of more than 1200 students used iPod technology. The classes included not only foreign languages and music as expected but also economics, education and engineering. 75 percent of the first year students questioned reported have been used their iPod for at least one purpose in their studies. The most popular use was to record such things as classroom lectures or field notes. 60 percent of students said they used the recording ability for educational purposes. The iPods could also be used to store files to move them from one computer to another. Yet many users said they did not know that.
The report says the extent to rich recorder lectures improve students performance remains unknown. Many students and faculty expressed concerns that class attendance could suffer. One student come it gives the message that coming to lecture or paying attention is not important because everything will be online late anyway.
The report says students were more likely to use content if it can already loaded on their iPod. But some professors found only limited uses for the technology. The recording quality was not very good in all situations. Not only that some publishers refused to permit students to record copyrighted material. There were also some technical difficulties. Yet the report says even several faculty members who had never used educational technology before had success in the project. In any case, Duke University does not plan to give iPods to all first year students this fall. Just those in classes that use them the most.
This VOA Special English Education report was written by Nancy Steinbach. Our reports are all on the web at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Bob Doughty. | 
