Ipods in the Classroom...Why Not??

"Students should not be allowed to use Ipods in the classroom; they are completely unacceptable!" This is a comment that is made a great deal in staff meetings at my school. And my school is not the only one that feels that way. Many schools across the country have a no Ipod policy, and these devices are confiscated. But I ask the question, "Why?"

Why confiscate a device that so many students obviously love and enjoy using? Why not, instead, figure out ways to use the Ipods in education and in a sense ruin the device for the kids when they realize that Ipods are educational tools? I had read on my favorite U.S. teacher's blog, Speaking of History, that he had won a grant and was using Zunes in his classroom. Similar to the ipod, he was creating podcasts for his students to listen to and converting his power points into picture files for the students to download. I began to wonder if this would be possible for the Ipod.

After completing a Google search, I then stumbled across a website called, Learning in Hand. This site goes over a number of different ways you can use the ipod touch: blogging, different educational applications you can download, even videos you can have students download and watch. It even shows you how to export your power point presentations to .jpg format so that students can download the presentations to the photos section of their Ipods.


Now, this all sounds great, but do these applications actually make a difference in student learning? Duke University actually gave out Ipods equipped with Belkin Voice recorders to all of the incoming freshmen students in the year 2004 as part of a Digital Initiative project they undertook. Some of the benefits that students noted after this first year was being able to to record lectures and then play them back at their leisure and also using the Ipod as a portable hard drive which you could store files on for transfer. The staff benefited from the increased collaboration and the fact that they were able to disseminate information through the Ipod. The biggest barriers to this project were actually the lack of training material available to both staff and students about how to use the Ipod for certain purposes and the lack of awareness about the Ipod's functionality. The results of their study are extremely interesting. Even K-12 schools, such as The Chapin School, are publicizing their findings and uses for the Ipod.


With so many new and interesting ways to use the Ipod in class constantly being developed as well as all the new applications that are being developed, I say why not utilize the Ipod for our Net generation students? Won't they be more motivated to participate in class if they are allowed to use technology that they love? I plan on transferring the study casts I have created over to Itunes so that my students will have easier access to the content, and I will also convert my power points over this summer. If the results of recent studies about Ipod use are turning out positive, isn't it better to harness this technology then be left in the dust by it?

These are a few of my favorite things...

As I started to contemplate three of my loves in instructional design, I realized very quickly how hard this assignment was going to be for me. Not because I do not love anything about instructional design, but because I have actually grown to love many of the concepts, principles, and technologies involved so picking just three from them was a difficult task. To admit that actually surprises the heck out of me. Going into the EDTEC program, I assumed that I would just be learning how to utilize a number of new technologies in the classroom. I had never heard of ADDIE, front end or needs analysis, the ARCS model....frankly, anything that we learned in the program. This changed quickly, and I soon realized I would be learning design principles that I would be able to carry with me for the rest of my life. As a teacher first and an instructional designer second, the following are the things that I believe have helped me grow the most as a designer and instructor.

My first love is Web 2.0. I had never been exposed to any of the websites and technologies that Web 2.0 encompasses except Myspace prior to starting the EDTEC program. I truly had no idea how it would change my life forever. Web 2.0 has allowed me to connect with so many different educators through blogs and wikis, reviving my creativity and passion for history. For example, if I had never learned what a blog was in the first place, I never would have found Eric Langhorst's great U.S. history blog Speaking of History. The impact that this man has had on my teaching practices is life-changing. It was because of him that I had my students re-enact the Boston Massacre and then write their own newscasts depicting the event. It was because of him that I started my own classroom blog, began to record "studycasts," and started to film the skits I have my students write in class.

Blogs also helped me out in a critical time in my life while I was planning my wedding day. I started my own personal blog and began to connect with other newylweds, snatching ideas they had used in their own wedding ceremonies from their blog sites. Web 2.0 has forever changed how I will create my instructional sessions, and I know Web 2.0 technologies will only continue to grow. A recent article I read titled "The Evolution of Online Student Recruitment" by Linda Briggs noted that student and faculty blogs are actually being used on the front page of many college and higher level education websites. I think the possibilities for Web 2.0 techonologies will only continue to evolve and shape education in new ways as people find ways to utilize them for educational purposes, such as schools using Twitter to update parents about events.

My second love is the Keller ARCS's model. I was first introduced to Keller's motivational design theory in the EDTEC 670 class when we were designing our own board games. The reason why I am so passionate about this theory is because it gets to the root of good lesson design. The ARCS model looks at the following factors: attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction. It requires one to consider connecting instruction to the goals of learners, providing stimulation, and then being concerned with how a learner will feel after either successful accomplishment of the goal or failure. This theory takes into consideration so many elements that educators should consider when constructing a lesson that they present to their students. I was definitely affected by it when I started to design my own board game during the course of this class, consistently asking myself where is the motivation to complete this game? Will it keep their attention? Are there factors I can put into the game that will motivate students to continue to play even if they have lost a game or are following behind? And the sad thing is that I know many teachers at my own school site do not take any of these factors into consideration. I personally started to go over my own lessons again after learning about this theory, questioning whether or not the lessons truly interested students. On Keller's website, he provides links to numerous studies currently being conducted to study how motivational design can affect and work with instructional design. I think that future studies done will verify and support this theory.

My third love is video editing/production. I never knew how much these classes would affect my own life as a history teacher until I took the EDTEC561 class and had the chance to create my own educational video. I had recently taken upon myself the task of starting to broadcast video announcements to my school site through our ASB class. I didn't really take things too seriously this first year with the class, but my whole perception of where I want to go with the announcements know has changed. I had never considered having the kids plot out scene by scene what the announcements should look like, have them take into consideration sound elements, props that they might use, etc. I have learned so much about about how to use all of the different features in iMovie because of that class. And I know that I will really be approaching the announcements from an instructional design perspective when the next school year starts all because of this one class. In face, I will be taking many more elements into consideration after finding the site School TV Made Easy. So many schools are now embracing the web and using it as a communication platform to deliver news to students, teachers, and parents; I feel this area will only continue to grow.