Milledgeville, GA — In rural Georgia, many college students are sporting a new accessory. Professors at Georgia College & State University (GC&SU) have discovered that the iPod isn’t just the world’s coolest device for storing and playing music tracks. Now, students in several classes tote an iPod around campus to listen to digital audio content that ranges from Shakespeare to Spanish history.
The iPod Project was the brainchild of Randall Thursby, vice chancellor for information and instructional technology for the University System of Georgia (USG), and Jim Wolfgang, chief information officer of GC&SU. Thursby had been mulling over potential unique applications for the iPod in the classroom. With the help of some special seed funds, the university acquired its first 50 iPods.
The Electronic Instructional Services (EIS) group of GC&SU then solicited proposals from 10 interdisciplinary teams from the campus. Each group presented their suggestions for innovative uses for iPod in their courses.
“Everyone wanted to do something well beyond the typical,” says Wolfgang, who also is a former faculty member at GC&SU. “People in education have been saying that the iPod would be great for helping students learn languages. But we wanted to find out what we could do that supported other areas of academia, such as the humanities.”
The iPod in my classes has transformed and utterly enlivened the way I use music in connection with other disciplines to foster critical thinking, speaking, and writing skills in my students.
— Dr. Rob Viau, Faculty, Georgia College & State University
Professors Think Creatively
Eventually, Wolfgang, Thursby and their colleagues settled on faculty members from two different courses to launch the program. One team included professors Dr. Rob Viau (English) and Dr. Greg Pepetone (Music), who planned to use the iPod to teach an interdisciplinary course “The Gothic Imagination.” In the political science department, Dr. Hank Edmondson and Dr. Daniel Fernald proposed that the iPod would enhance the students’ learning experiences in their team-taught “War, Politics, and Shakespeare” course.
Each of the professors was given an iBook laptop with iTunes, and an iPod, enabling them to collect all of their audio files in one place. Next, EIS helped the teachers digitize the audio portions of their lectures. The content was then converted into MP3 format for use with iPod.
Once the materials were available, students in the classes simply visited one of two iMac computers — dubbed the “mother ships” — located in the university’s computer labs. By ”docking” their iPods, students could download the MP3 files in seconds via iTunes. During the semester, any updates to the course materials made by the professors were quickly handled by a brief return to a mother ship for the instant “synching” of each iPod.
iPod Supports Educational Innovation
Viau’s “Gothic Imagination” course combines the study of the literature, music, architecture, and art of the last three centuries. Prior to the iPod Project, Viau had never included a musical component in the course. But with the addition of iPod, students now understand how music related to the creative works of the time.
