Duke to Give iPods to Incoming Freshman

[Manzana]

So, are the iPods really "given" to the students?? Or will they remain school property and be returned when the student leaves?

no way, they're not given out. it's a private institution so i assume you'll be able to see a $300 dollar charge there somewhere hidden amongst the 40k(guessing here) for tuition the poor parents have to pay for one year.

i think it's great, i mean you can download class notes from most classes now, so why not download the audio also? sure beats giving somebody a tape recorder like i used to do when i felt like ditching and hitting the beach!

 

[jxyama]

Well this IS just a test program to see if it can actually work. Why not have an open mind about it instead of being bitter?

i'm not bitter. i just find premises behind these things so silly. instead of spending money to jazz things up superficially under the pretense of "better education," why not spend the money in a more worthwhile, but less flashier, way? duke is a top-notch university with a tuition to match. instead of supplying 1,500+ students with $200 iPods, why not award 30 $10,000 scholarships for the economically disadvantaged? why not give 300 $1,000 discounts to be used to purchase laptops by the disadvantaged?

if it's to be a test program, why go the entire campus? why not test with "honors" program first? how about with "music" majors first?

besides, if you have a laptop, what can an iPod do that any decent laptop cannot? will there be docking station at lecture halls so you can grab your lecture there? will you really be using an iPod to listen to lectures while strolling around the campus?

students rejoicing at the prospect of getting an iPod aren't excited because it will give them a way to listen to lectures. they are mostly excited because they managed to obtain the latest, hippest gadget without nagging their parents.

if i was a parent paying for duke education, i'd ask that duke do this on their own and not tack on the money on the tuition. if i was strugging to pay for my own way through duke, i'd be pissed to see some of my hard earned tuition money being spent on gadgets.

 

[decksnap]

It may be that they are loading them with campus building locations, office hours, campus telephone numbers, sylibi?? maybe even a guided audio tour of the university. There IS a lot of possibility here.

 

[^Dukie^]

Two Years Too Late

Being a rising junior at Duke, I think it's kind of funny that I have not heard about this from the campus Apple representative yet. Hopefully I can get a new ipod with some of the Duke software on it to replace my old 2 gen ipod. For those of you who think this is a really big expense on the students, the yearly cost for a student to go to Duke is somewhere around $38k. The price of an ipod is not that big of a deal. Either way, I wish I'd get a free one.

 

[TorbX]

I don't see this coming to Norwegian universities anytime soon.

 

[wPod]

ha. . . now you wont get in trouble for listening to your iPod durring lecture!
'but prof. i was just looking at my assignment on my iPod' it would be nice if all computer on campus had a dock. . . then you could just drop in your iPod and use it like an external drive instead of those little flash thumb drives. that would rock. oh yeah. . . and have your home directory on your iPod with an auto sync. . . THAT would be cool!!! id upgrade from my first gen iPod for that!

 

[jxyama]

It may be that they are loading them with campus building locations, office hours, campus telephone numbers, sylibi?? maybe even a guided audio tour of the university. There IS a lot of possibility here.

i reiterate my point that this is nothing but gimmick. the same can be accomplished by supplying campus-wide wifi coverage and wireless card for everyone. a laptop can do everything an iPod can and is a lot more useful and productive tool.

the affluent kids will already have an iPod and a laptop. duke should spend the money to afford everyone a laptop and a wifi-card...

 

[rikers_mailbox]

1,800 iPods in a community computing environment? this would be a great experiment for the "home on iPod" feature.

I would definitely use something like that. . I have different Macs and home and work, and hate having to keep bookmarks, mail folders, etc. synced. (and no, I don't want a .Mac account)

 

[^Dukie^]

i reiterate my point that this is nothing but gimmick. the same can be accomplished by supplying campus-wide wifi coverage and wireless card for everyone. a laptop can do everything an iPod can and is a lot more useful and productive tool.

the affluent kids will already have an iPod and a laptop. duke should spend the money to afford everyone a laptop and a wifi-card...

Nearly every incoming student to Duke has a PC. The campus already has wifi everywhere, and a $50 wifi card is hardly a huge expense on students. Duke's OIT department obviously knows this and decided the iPod deal is a good promotion.

 

[gwangung]

i reiterate my point that this is nothing but gimmick. the same can be accomplished by supplying campus-wide wifi coverage and wireless card for everyone. a laptop can do everything an iPod can and is a lot more useful and productive tool.

iPod's cheaper, more mobile and more convenient (or are you thinking students can pop out a laptop as easily as they can an ipod?).

 

[jxyama]

no kidding iPod is smaller, etc. it's also a passive device. you cannot do anything but listen/read pre-loaded material.

it's a gimmick. no doubt it's a great promotion, but that doesn't mean it's not a gimmick. i find it rather useless to argue about the educational merit of iPods because there really aren't much. i personally feel that the money (wherever it's coming from) could have been used for a better cause, that's all i'm trying to say.

if duke really wanted to promote education through portable device, a PDA with decent memory card and a phone jack would have done better. how much memory do you need to record lectures or notes? how many of us have USB keydrives with 128 MB and put all of our papers and documents on it?

it's a great promotion for apple and duke. it's very hip. iPod is the "it" item right now. but that doesn't mean this isn't a gimmick.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I'd be pissed.

College is expensive enough. I don't want ANOTHER $300 (min) tacked on just to get an iPod that I may already have, or don't want.

Yes, it's great for the kids who *DO* want one. But for those who already have one, it's just a pointless extra expense. Either these kids will pay for it later (in student loans,) or their parents are paying for it. (Or, some scholarship organization is paying for it.) No matter how it happens, SOMEONE is paying for it. And it's a totally frivolous expense for a college. (Why don't they just give out 36" HDTVs and DVD Recorder/TiVo units to dorm residents, so that students can record lectures that are broadcast on the internal TV system?)

Same feeling toward schools that give out laptops. Yes, they're great. But it's an expense that someone is paying for, that the majority of students don't *NEED*. If you want to have every student using a notebook, require them as school gear, and let the student choose their own laptop. An iPod is totally pointless for education, though. If you want every student to have an updated portable data device, just hand out 256MB or larger USB flash drives, for crying out loud.

 

[gwangung]

no kidding iPod is smaller, etc. it's also a passive device. you cannot do anything but listen/read pre-loaded material.

Yes? And reading preloaded material where toting a laptop is inconvenient or impossible has no value? Lists of campus phone numbers and addresses isn't useful? Descriptions of procedures and policies? The, um, academic catalog? (And, you know, putting the academic catalog and various directories on ipods and printing fewer paper catalogs might be cheaper....)

You seem to be stuck on interactivity and forgetting the large advantages in portability and convenience that the iPod has. Reformulate the question and you might get a bit further.

 

[jxyama]

Yes? And reading preloaded material where toting a laptop is inconvenient or impossible has no value? Lists of campus phone numbers and addresses isn't useful? Descriptions of procedures and policies? The, um, academic catalog? (And, you know, putting the academic catalog and various directories on ipods and printing fewer paper catalogs might be cheaper....)

we've done ok without touting around those information everywhere thus far. you don't mean to tell me that those information are worth $300 storage medium?

if you give everyone an iPod, you will find ways to use them. that doesn't mean iPods are "useful" for those purposes. if there is a problem that needs to be solved and iPod seems to work, then i will conclude iPod is useful. however, as it stands, this seems like an attempt to turn iPod into a solution to a problem that doesn't exist under the name of improving education.

that's why i'm insisting that this is a gimmick: there's no glaring problem that seems to be addressed by the introduction of iPod. i feel it's introducing iPod to campus for the sake of introducing them. give iPods first, and we'll look for problems we can solve with it later -> a certain formula for disaster. (see tablet PC - a device made to solve problems that doesn't really exist or need solving.)

You seem to be stuck on interactivity and forgetting the large advantages in portability and convenience that the iPod has. Reformulate the question and you might get a bit further.

name me one "question" on campus education scene that's better addressed by iPod than any other device.

 

[Downdivx]

College is expensive enough. I don't want ANOTHER $300 (min) tacked on just to get an iPod that I may already have, or don't want.

Yes, it's great for the kids who *DO* want one. But for those who already have one, it's just a pointless extra expense. Either these kids will pay for it later (in student loans,) or their parents are paying for it. (Or, some scholarship organization is paying for it.) No matter how it happens, SOMEONE is paying for it. And it's a totally frivolous expense for a college. (Why don't they just give out 36" HDTVs and DVD Recorder/TiVo units to dorm residents, so that students can record lectures that are broadcast on the internal TV system?)

Same feeling toward schools that give out laptops. Yes, they're great. But it's an expense that someone is paying for, that the majority of students don't *NEED*. If you want to have every student using a notebook, require them as school gear, and let the student choose their own laptop. An iPod is totally pointless for education, though. If you want every student to have an updated portable data device, just hand out 256MB or larger USB flash drives, for crying out loud.

I have to completely disagree with you. I just graduated from Wake Forest. Wake was the first college in the country to give include a laptop in tuition. Yes, tuition increased more than the price of buying the computers individually. But we got a ton of software (probably too much) and support was a breeze. If you had a computer problem you took it into IS, they gave you a loaner and you had your computer back in a day or two. Standarization across a campus has its benefits.

At the same time Professors could require more from students without hearing the traditional computing complaints. Campus IT was more secure (IS could force Anti-virus updates) and compatability was never a big issue.

So its not just about national prestige or charging more for tuition - issueing standard equipment has its advantages.

W

 

[gwangung]

we've done ok without touting around those information everywhere thus far. you don't mean to tell me that those information are worth $300 storage medium?

if you give everyone an iPod, you will find ways to use them. that doesn't mean iPods are "useful" for those purposes. if there is a problem that needs to be solved and iPod seems to work, then i will conclude iPod is useful. however, as it stands, this seems like an attempt to turn iPod into a solution to a problem that doesn't exist under the name of improving education.

This is quite possible. However, I can see the utility of having standard, portable multi-Gig storage as a standard for students (and iPods are competitive in that range). Placing that in a package where it is VERY attractive for students to keep with them may be worth the minimal cost (and $300 is a minimal cost if there are savings in printing of directories, policy manuals and catalogs). That may be worth it for Duke to try.

 

[jxyama]

i think, given the way the world is now, a laptop should almost be a standard issue equipment for college. i don't think any college education is complete without some knowledge of how to operate a computer. yeah, i know, to learn how to use a computer, you don't need a laptop. but then again, you don't need anything but dial-up to use the internet too. at some point, a certain level of convenience should become a part of the "standard."

a portable music device, well, hmm...?

 

[gwangung]

name me one "question" on campus education scene that's better addressed by iPod than any other device.

Academic catalogs.
Faculty/staff directories.
Policy manual.
Campus maps.
Public domain source materials for core courses

Put 'em on an iPod and students have it RIGHT THERE.

 

[jxyama]

This is quite possible. However, I can see the utility of having standard, portable multi-Gig storage as a standard for students (and iPods are competitive in that range). Placing that in a package where it is VERY attractive for students to keep with them may be worth the minimal cost (and $300 is a minimal cost if there are savings in printing of directories, policy manuals and catalogs). That may be worth it for Duke to try.

centralized network storage, accessible even remotely with a wifi access, will be more secure (professional maintenance, no potential for loss or theft and backed up regularly), more cost effective (since most dorms/campus buildings are wired and wireless is easier and cheaper to set up than issuing iPods and bulk HDs are cheap) and more versatile.

it may be worth a try, but it sounds like a rather expensive experiment to test something that's not very convincing (at least to me) that it needs to be tried. i just don't see the formula on how iPod would trump over all other available, cheaper and robust alternative solutions.

 

[rickvanr]

Lucky bastards...my frosh kit consisted of a few mini chocolate bars and some samples of Tide.

you must remember in the U.S. tuition is a little pricer then up north

 

[stingerman]

You don't need to worry, because Apple isn't relying strictly on the ipod to make this a glorious thing.

The customized iTunes store that allows them to download school related things in addition to music is the real key here.......it's the same power that works with keeping the iPod at the top of the field, too.

The iPod + iTunes Music Store = a fantastic music experience.

The iPod + Duke University + Special Duke/iTunes Music Store = a fantastic Duke University/music experience.

This is also the key to more Xserve/WebObject sales. Since iTMS runs on Xserves and Apple's WebObjects.

 

[jxyama]

Academic catalogs.
Faculty/staff directories.
Policy manual.
Campus maps.
Public domain source materials for core courses

Put 'em on an iPod and students have it RIGHT THERE.

were those information begging to be made available at all times? funny, i did fine in my college without those info on me all the time.

need to see class description? get online. how often did i want to know about the class description while walking around on campus? not very often.

need to contact a faculty? go to their building.

policy manual? i never needed to read that except at my room.

need a map? if you are a student, it takes a week to learn the campus map. only visitors would need the map with them - but visitors wouldn't have the iPod with the map, would they?

directory? how about just one cell phone call to a campus information center? (i didn't even have a cell phone during college. i still did fine.)

again, the critical questions: making these available to all students via iPods - is that worth $300 per student? are these issues that really need to be addressed? if so, are they best addressed by iPods?

 

[Doctor Q]

Many questions can be answered by reading the details.

For example:

Duke officials said the iPod distribution is part of a pilot program between Duke and Apple Computer, Inc. that will be evaluated after a year. Duke is paying for the project with strategic planning funds that it has set aside for one-time innovative technology purposes.

The 1,650 20-GB iPods distributed to Duke freshmen are the latest-generation ipods from Apple and are compatible with both Mac and Windows systems, as are an additional 150 iPods slated for other academic and support needs. The iPods given to the first-year students will become property of the recipients. Students who do not own their own computers will also be able to participate in the project through computing laboratories on campus.

 

[ChuckM]

Funds are from a one-time source.

again, the critical questions: making these available to all students via iPods - is that worth $300 per student? are these issues that really need to be addressed? if so, are they best addressed by iPods?

From Maccentral:
"This is a pilot program between Duke University and Apple, which will be evaluated after a year. It's being paid for by Duke using strategic planning funds that have been set aside for one-time purposes, rather than with funds that might otherwise have been used for other operational programs."

So the funds are from a source that is set aside for these exact types of experiments. At least the university is trying to think outside the box. Your argument of using the funds on tuition, while admirable, is not valid. These funds would have been used for something experimental in a one-time fashion anyways.

Chuck

 

[Skandranon]

Letter from the Provost

A little bird shared this with me today...



From: help@duke.edu
Date: July 19, 2004 4:32:55 PM EDT
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: Duke Technology Announcement

Dear Faculty within the School of Arts & Sciences and the Pratt School of
Engineering:

I'm writing to let you know about an innovative year-long pilot program
Duke is launching in cooperation with Apple.

This August during Orientation, all incoming freshmen will be issued special-
edition Duke iPods. These pocket-size digital devices will be preloaded with
Duke-related content. Throughout the year, students will be able to download
course content provided by faculty, including language lessons, music,
recorded lectures and audio books. We anticipate that students will generate
some of their own material for the program as well.

A collaborative effort by Duke's Center for Instructional Technology (CIT),
Office of the Provost, Office of Information Technology, Office of Student
Affairs, and the Executive Vice President, this pilot project supports the
goal outlined in our strategic plan, "Building on Excellence," to encourage
effective uses of new technology in education and campus life.

We are limiting our distribution of these iPods to this single class because
it will make it easier for us to evaluate their experience relative to other
students and to determine whether the iPods promoted educational innovation
as we hoped. Lynne O'Brien, director of CIT is coordinating the academic
applications of this project, and will be inviting faculty to submit project
ideas early in the fall semester.

Although I encourage you to learn about and consider participating in this
iPod project, faculty participation will be strictly voluntary. There will
be no requirement that faculty use iPods in their classes. Duke is paying
for the project with strategic planning funds that it has set aside for
one-time innovative technology purposes, rather than with funds that might
be used for other operational programs.

Look for more information on this project in the days ahead in the Dialogue
and on www.duke.edu, as well as in the wider media.

Sincerely,

Peter Lange
Provost