Thursday, December 09, 2004

iPods in school

Manhattan's private Brearley School has instituted an iPod requirement for its language classes. Since the school already uses Macs for classwork, it seems the iPod was the logical choice of hardware for the students to use. Still, like Gothamist, I got along OK with crappy cassette tapes and headphones in high school, and I think part of a language curriculum should be that you have to look like a dork while learning. On the other hand, most of these kids probably had iPods already, and the rest were able to get them at a discount or rent them from the school. I'm not a big iPod fan, but I am the happy owner of a competitor's hard-drive-based music player, and I think it's a good thing that portable hard drives are making inroads in education. First Duke University issues them to freshmen, and now this. I predict that within five years children will be issued 5 TB (terabyte=1000 gigabytes) hard-drive devices that will store music, movies, schoolwork, and a complete copy of their DNA for use in cloning purposes. I'm sure it will still be an iPod: let's face it: even I will admit that Apple, and not another company, will provide these devices for years to come.

I need to go home now. The paint fumes in this office are clearly affecting my judgment. Check back later tonight or tomorrow for a post on what I've been doing all week.

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