iPods revolutionize education
More and more students are getting plugged into the ‘iPod craze’. Not to be left behind, a group of teachers at Joel Barlow High School in the United States decided to plug in also and incorporated iPods and podcasting technology in their teaching strategy.
iPod is the world’s best-selling brand of ortable media players designed and marketed by Apple Computer. Its success brings in a new technology called podcasting, which allows distribution of multimedia file over the Internet using syndication feeds. Downloaded or ‘streamed files’ from the Internet can be played on iPods, mobile devices, or personal computers.
Podcasts allow teachers to record and upload their lectures to a Web site for students to access. Through iPods, similar to flash drives, students can store and ‘play’ downloaded lecture files. When before, listening to lectures is limited within the confines of classrooms, students can now review the lectures anywhere, everywhere through their iPods.
Podcasting also promotes personalized student learning. This is very useful for students with different learning speeds. Every student is given the opportunity to learn at their own pace. They can go home and listen to a lesson repeatedly until they are familiar with the information. This new technology makes education fun and interesting for both students and teachers.
Such pervasive application raises the concern on whether podcasting would replace the need for having teachers at all.
But with the amount of information available on the WorldWideWeb, now more than ever, teachers are needed, not to provide these information, but to help students understand, discern, and use these information properly.
Did you know?
» As of April 2006, Apple has already sold over 50.8 million iPods all over the world.
» A projection of over 700,000 household in the US will use podcasting this year.
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