Dad I need an iPod for school

Seven months ago, I would have thought the statement “Dad, I need an iPod for school would have been absurd. Today I would say it is almost believable. Another few years, an iPod may be as standard as pencil and paper. I know… you are thinking to yourself how in the world could a device that plays music be used in my child’s education. Stick with me.

Late October of 2005, I purchased my first iPod. I wanted to learn about podcasting and thought to understand the concept fully; I needed to have an iPod. I further justified the expense of the iPod by not having to purchase a new stereo for my truck. When my iPod arrived, I quickly downloaded all my music to my shiny new video iPod. Next, I subscribed to several podcast. Over the next several weeks, I discovered I was listening to more podcast than music. What a strange phenomenon. During one of the podcast I learned about Audible.com, (http://www.audible.com) I thought to myself I would love to read The World is Flat again but don’t have the time to read it, I did however, have several hours each week driving in my truck so listening to the book made perfect sense.

Yesterday, I had several errands to run and several podcast to listen too. In fact on was a four part series by David Warlick. As the final podcast concluded, I was pulling into my driveway. I thought to myself that I had just turned an hour of what could have been non-productive time into an opportunity to learn.

Given the exploding popularity of podcasting in general and the fact that many early adopting educators are using podcasting in there classrooms, your student may never load music on their iPod. Okay, that is a little far fetched, but using an iPod to listen to a class assignment is on its way to being the norm. Hey, don’t take my word for it, judge for yourself. Jump on iTunes and look at the Education genre or the Education Podcast Network. (http://www.epnweb.org)