Educational Technology and Life has moved:
Visit edtechlife.com for new content.

iPod in Education

This is probably the last response to a classmate that I will pass on. I am done with my doctoral coursework!

(A moment of silence, please... unless you feel like cheering for me... or better yet, have a BBQ and a beer for me today!)

Now it's on to the solitary reading, researching, and writing for me.

Ok, that's enough "and life"... back to your educational technology.

Here's your iPod in Education post. The bit in italics was a post by a classmate. Then comes my response...

The Apple Computer iPod music player has many uses for the classroom. More than a music player, the iPod is an exciting new audio tool that can help enhance student learning in any subject area, particularly for language and literacy development. Historical speeches, influential symphonies, conversational Spanish. The iPod and the Griffin iTalk Voice Recorder can be used to record any kind of audio files, from classroom lectures to poetry readings. The possibilities are endless — students can share personal notes, track small group discussions, or conduct interviews.

The iPod can even be used for teacher professional development. Apple has professional development content for teachers to download.

Reference:

http://www.apple.com/education/ipod/

Craig,

This is a powerful (and powerfully cool) new application of technology in education. I'm lucky enough to have been in a position to see some of this develop (at the OCDE we began offering classes on "iPod in Education" in the fall and one of our coordinators - a guy I had hoped to work with for a long time - got hired away by Apple to be their manager of iPod in education)... but with the growth of the read/write web (and podcasting) innovation is happening at a blindingly fast rate in this field. There is something new about iPods in education in my aggregator every day!

My wife drank the kool aid in the fall and now uses iPod to pre and post assess her kindergarden students, and as an integral part of her Movie Magic after school class for 1st and 2nd graders, who made iMovies in the style of "Reading Rainbow" in which they used the Ken Burns effect to display the pictures from the book... and they read the story for the soundtrack (recorded using iPods and iTalks).

Check this out... Jason Ediger (the new Apple employee I mentioned above) FURLed this today... the education podcasters network at http://www.epnweb.org/

See also this post by Will Richardson (something of an authroity on the read/write web in education) in which he discusses some of the latest development in podcasting... http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2005/05/30#a3613 (it was part II in a series, so you should be able to find more info on his blog.)

Oh, and if you want to subscribe to Ediger's archive... http://www.furl.net/members/jediger

I suppose I should have mentioned RSS as a killer new educational technology! That is how I get most of my news and current research these days. Too bad we don't have time for that conversation here, too.

-Mark