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Like any professor who has been around for 35 years, Charles Rathbone, associate professor of education, is always looking for ways to keep his lectures fresh. Hes a prime example of a more mature teacher, as he lightheartedly refers to himself on his Web site, who uses new teaching methods and technology to engage his students as much today as he did when he arrived on campus in 1970.

Hotel Booking This semester, Rathbone put together a seven-minute Podcast of the highlights of a 40-minute lecture from his Learning and the Learner course, hoping it would stimulate some discussion and help bring to life what he viewed as pretty thick content. The response to the use of Apples palm-size digital music player far exceeded expectations.

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Travel Agency I decided that if I continued to stand up there and impart wisdom, we were all going to go crazy, says Rathbone. So I recorded the highlights of a lecture I gave three weeks earlier into an iPod, tying it to more current content, and posted it on my blog. It took me 15 minutes. Students were engaged and making connections that I hadnt seen them make before. It was as fresh for them as it was for me. Theres a lot of innovation going on that attempts to refresh teaching. I dont think we spend enough time studying its effects on learning.

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Cheap Hotel Rathbones experiment, although still somewhat rare, is becoming more common at UVM and at other universities as the concept of using iPods in classrooms gains acceptance. Paul Martin, assistant professor of English, is the first person at the university to teach a course requiring students to use UVM-loaned iPods, devices previously known more for downloading songs from the iTunes Music Store for 99 cents. But as far back as 2001, the music department used a Rio, an antecedent of the iPod, to record up to two hours of music for students to listen to at various times during the day as part of a music theory course.

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Flight Booking Students in Martins English 005 TAP course, The Great White North: an Exploration of Canadian Culture, listen to pre-loaded content that includes Canadian music, news programs, lectures, poetry, sports and other information about Canada. Students also create their own Podcast about their trip to Ottawa.

It has been a lot of fun, says first-year student Sarah Souza, who had never used an iPod before the class. I have to admit, listening to a lecture on an iPod is better than hearing some professors give one, especially if you missed parts of it. An iPod wouldnt work in my math class of course, but it would help in my Spanish or Chinese classes.

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Martin and other professors are trying to discover the most effective uses of the players as teaching tools. A much-ballyhooed experiment at Duke University in 2004 that put iPods in the hands of all 1,650 freshmen has answered some of these questions, but raised others. A study by Dukes Center for Instructional Technology found that 75 percent of first-year students used the devices for at least one course, and that more than 1,200 students in 50 courses utilized the technology.

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Hotel Chicago The original belief by Duke officials that the new technology would invigorate academic life, however, hasnt been borne out enough for them to give this years incoming class iPods. Instead, Duke distributes them only to students who enroll in courses that put the device to substantial use. According to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, more and more professors are recording lectures in digital formats for students to listen to outside of class. Detractors of coursecasting say it rewards lazy students who skip class and could ultimately lead to empty classrooms and ultimately the death of the sage.

Online Booking The availability of lectures has also raised serious intellectual property rights. Proponents say its a very effective learning tool, especially for certain disciplines such as foreign languages, music and literature. Its a trial run and weve been experimenting left, right and center, says Martin, who was also one of the first UVM professors to blog through the university. Audio definitely adds an important dimension and is especially helpful to auditory learners. It has challenged me to rethink how I teach and to find different ways of getting my message across in the classroom.

Travel Health Insurance Martin launched his project with the help of a $5,000 Instructional Incentive Grant from the Center for Teaching and Learning and with some additional support from the deans office in the College of Arts and Sciences. He bought Apple 20 G color iPods with Griffin iTalk microphones for about $270 each. The microphones allowed students to record reflections and sounds from the Ottawa trip as part of a 10-minute audio essay, or podcast, which they will edit, using editing programs such as Audacity or GarageBand.

Hotel Reservation The Podcasts give students a voice in the classroom they may normally not have, says Martin. They can record these things in their dorm room, eliminating the self-censorship that goes on in the classroom.

London Hotel Booking Despite its current popularity, the future of the iPod as teaching tool could be short-lived. Its demise, ironically, appears to be the rapid pace of technology itself. Steve Cavrak, assistant director for academic computing services, says the iPod is a fad in the sense that its new and fashionable and, perhaps most importantly, is reaping profits. (Many other digital players have similar or greater capabilities in the classroom, but are less frequently mentioned.)

Discount Travel From my point of view, the iPod is about online marketing of music at 99 cents a pop, says Cavrak, who helps professors utilize blogs, iPods and other technologies and estimates that about 30-40 percent of UVM students own the devices based on responses of students and parents at orientation.

Its a fad in the sense that its the commercialization of a product. The part thats not a fad is that you can download language materials and lectures on the fly, he continues. Thats permanent. Its definitely an effective teaching tool, but you have to let them (professors) see what it can do; otherwise its just an expensive toy. The iPod is a valuable teaching tool, but ultimately its a technology to be used on the way to the next one.

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