Getting Tuned In
Monday, October 31, 2005 at 8:16PM 
The San Bernardino County Sun recently published the article Getting Tuned In. It tells about the use of iPods at Clement Middle School. The iPods are used to listen to recordings of literature instead of listening to them on tape or CD. The article mentions great uses and benefits of digital audio for learning. The school uses audio from the audible.com service, so they are paying for the recordings.
iPods are great, but it's important to note that everything mentioned in this article could also be done with Palm or Windows Mobile handhelds. Think about 
this: The iPod Shuffles used at Clement retail for $99 and do not even have a screen. For $129 (for the Palm Zire 31) plus the cost of an SD card, students could listen to digital audio while illustrating it, writing about it, taking notes or a quiz, or reading along all on their handhelds. For just a little more than $99, you can supply students with a fully-functional computer instead of having limited the use to digital audio.
The biggest advantage for using an iPod for digital audio is its seamless integration with iTunes. The moment you plug in the iPod, iTunes syncs podcasts and playlists to the device. It's not as seamless when using a Palm or Windows Mobile handheld computer. I prefer to use an SD card reader and copy the audio files from my desktop computer to the card. When I insert the card into my handheld, I can listen to the audio in pTunes, Real Player, or TCPMP. Read more about using your handheld as an MP3 player at K12Handhelds. And this is really handy: Mac users can use the free software SyncTunes to simplify the process of syncing mobile devices and memory cards to iTunes (Note: You won't be able to play songs you have purchased through the iTunes music store because they are copy-protected.)
Rest assured, whatever you use for listening, digital audio is a great tool for learning.
Reader Comments (3)
It looks like they took the original article down. Darn! I wanted to read that.
Yikes! They have removed the article already. You can still find it on Google's cache, for a little while anyhow. http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:2PYXQa2eLlEJ:www.sbsun.com/news/ci_3123197+&hl=en&lr=lang_en&client=safari" REL="nofollow">Click here.
Here's the text for the first part of the article:
Getting tuned in
iPod-enhanced reading a hit
C.L. Lopez, Staff Writer
REDLANDS -- Silence enveloped the classroom.
Students listened raptly as pet mongoose Rikki-tikki-tavi fought a battle to the death with Nag, the cobra.
Rikki-tikki-tavi won, as the 19th-century story was brought to life on a 21st-century device for the 15 children in Linda Bomar's seventh-grade English class at Clement Middle School.
The difference was the iPod Shuffle, a digital audio player about the size of a pack of gum and weighing no more than a car key.
The widely publicized Shuffle is the latest alternative to books on tapes or compact discs. Since its arrival at Clement, pupils are finding it easier to tune in to the audio versions of books and stories.
"The iPods are great tools to have in the classroom because they support the students' reading,'' said Bomar, who uploaded the audio version of Rudyard Kipling's story about the heroic mongoose onto the devices for her students.
The children listen to the story through earphones as they read it from the book. It gives each student the power to move at his or her own pace, moving ahead or going back to listen again to an earlier segment or skip around in the story, something that is awkward to do on a tape or CD.
Digital devices like the iPod have random access memory. On a tape, if the listener is near the end of a story or lesson and wants to go back and check a fact at the beginning, he or she must wait for the tape to rewind.
The iPod also allows the pupil to learn the pronunciation of difficult words as they are read by actors, professional storytellers and sometimes by the author.
Here's the conclusion:
Depending on length, the 512-megabyte-capacity Shuffle can hold three to five books. Weber said if students bring in their own iPods, he will put the audio books on them.
All of the school's audio books are downloaded from audible.com. The Web site features audible books, stories, newspapers and magazines. Textbooks might be available on the site in the future.
"The data we have shows that 30 percent of people are auditory learners they learn more from hearing than learning,'' said Stevan Allen, a spokesman for publisher Pearson Education. "This provides a new way for people to learn and study. It is an exciting approach to learning and teaching.''
Thanks!