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?