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Cool classroom tools
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iPods and podcasting are being seen as important educational aids
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PHOTO: REUTERS
ON CAMPUS iPods are breaking away from the traditional mould to become part of the college curriculum
Apple's iPod music player has, within a brief span of four years, become central to that company's technology roadmap, making the brand once more the cool tool, which recalls the first Apple PC of the late 1970s. As Apple celebrated its 30th birthday last week, the media seemed to be writing more about the iPod and its complimentary music service, iTunes, rather than about its flagship PC products.
There is yet another technology that is helping to turn not just the iPod but this entire class of portable music players into something entirely different — cool tools for the classroom. This is the whole business of podcasting: the distribution of streaming audio or video files. In fact, podcasting has nothing to do with iPods, and its content can be distributed to any platform including PCs and mobile phones.
The reason why iPods and podcasting seem to be made for each other is because the iPod is basically powered and portable hard drive with lots of storage space.
In recent weeks, at least one American university — the Duke University in North Carolina — has said that students in the Spring 2006 term will be provided the latest 5th generation Video iPod on loan for the duration of their course.
The faculty is involved in what is known as the Duke Digital Initiative (DDI) where supplementary educational material including illustrations, presentations and audio books, are podcast to compliment the class work.
The students studying Shakespeare, for example, can download the entire play as spoken by classic actors of the Royal Shakespeare Company. With iPods now offering over 60 gigabytes of space, these handy devices can pack in as much information as a desktop PC.
A special website
To provide a clearinghouse of all such educational material, a special website is now available (http://epnweb.org).
The Education Podcast Network is a rich resource of classroom aids, which any teacher, even in India, can modify and podcast to local use.
While Apple's original iPods maybe rather pricey, any number of cheaper clones are available these days, and for something about Rs. 3,000 to Rs. 4,000, it should be possible for a school or college in India to reach out to its students in a new meaningful and cool way and create a whole new educational iPod lifestyle.
A. VISHNU
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