Giving out iPods is perfectly fine

Why are so many academics–especially the tenured ones–so cranky? They have what Stanley Aronowitz once called the “last good job in America” and they still complain. The latest fodder for complaints among the academic class (which of course I’m in the process of attempting to gain membership) is the new wave of universities giving out iPods to all of their incoming freshmen students. Some schools have been doing this for a while. One summer I worked with someone who told me that Duke gave out a free iPod to her and her fellow incoming freshmen. That was around 2003.

So why is the New York Times now raising the question of the impact of the iPod into the college classroom? Well, one reason is that more universities have started to do this. But the other, more important reason, is that the iPod has evolved. The first generation iPod did not have wireless Internet access. But even then, one can ask: Haven’t students been able to bring in their laptops to class for some time now? What makes professors more worried that, because of a smaller mobile device with Internet connectivity, students are more inclined pay less attention?

Students already have laptops and cellphones, of course, but the newest devices can take class distractions to a new level. They practically beg a user to ignore the long-suffering professor struggling to pass on accumulated wisdom from the front of the room — a prospect that teachers find galling and students view as, well, inevitable.

“When it gets a little boring, I might pull it out,” acknowledged Naomi J. Pugh, a first-year student at Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn., referring to her new iPod Touch, which can connect to the Internet over a campus wireless network. She speculated that professors might try harder to make classes interesting if they were competing with the devices.

This is I think the main misgiving that professors have; yet another device that will distract students from their lectures.

“I’m not someone who’s anti-technology, but I’m always worried that technology becomes an end in and of itself, and it replaces teaching or it replaces analysis,” said Ellen G. Millender, associate professor of classics at Reed College in Portland, Ore. (She added that she hoped to buy an iPhone for herself once prices fall.)

The schools, on the other hand, emphasize their pedagogic potential.

While schools emphasize its usefulness — online research in class and instant polling of students, for example — a big part of the attraction is, undoubtedly, that the iPhone is cool and a hit with students. Basking in the aura of a cutting-edge product could just help a university foster a cutting-edge reputation.

Experts see a movement toward the use of mobile technology in education, though they say it is in its infancy as professors try to concoct useful applications. Providing powerful hand-held devices is sure to fuel debates over the role of technology in higher education.

“We think this is the way the future is going to work,” said Kyle Dickson, co-director of research and the mobile learning initiative at Abilene Christian University in Texas, which has bought more than 600 iPhones and 300 iPods for students entering this fall.

One thing that I think is particularly interesting for someone like me who teaches sociology is the ability to take live polls. Now, this is easily done in class. I do it all of the time but manually–literally. I say something akin to “Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a job” to talk about Marx and the elementary labor process. (Or, sometimes I say something like “You got a hundred dollar bill throw your hands up!” But that’s Fatman Scoop’s random party break.) It works for me still to do this manually because my actual purpose is not so much to show how to do statistical analysis; it’s do have a theoretical discussion about the labor theory of value. But for those teaching statistics in really any of the social sciences could generate sample data nearly instantly.

I wish I had that during my boring ass year of stats in the first couple years of my PhD…

And lastly, maybe some of these devices will force professors step their damn game up.