Link: Students plug into iLectures-No more excuses for skipping class.
There's no such thing as a missed lecture for University of Michigan dentistry students, who are transforming their personal iPods into the latest college learning tool.Slept through the talk on craniofacial biology? Go to an Internet iTunes store set up exclusively for future dentists in Ann Arbor. There, students can download the professor's recorded wisdom to an MP3 player for easy listening while strolling across campus, working out or cramming for an exam.
More schools are adding podcasts all the time. It is such a better thing to do to have this material available so you can review things you may have missed and get ready for tests.
"My concern is students not taking notes will have a lasting effect on their true mastery of the material," said William Kennedy, humanities professor and director of teaching and faculty development at Michigan Technological University in Houghton."
This is a good question. If you take notes at all whether in class or while listening to the recording will probably be very helpful. If you don't take notes, you'll not remember nearly as much.
"Lopez, 32, routinely employs the popular MP3 technology.
He has downloaded about 20 of the nearly 200 lectures posted on the U-M Dentistry iTunes site this term. Most were for review because he said the sessions are fast and jam-packed with technicalities.
"It's kind of hard while you are taking notes in a hurry to write something like parvo cellular nucleus," Lopez said. "I reviewed one lecture the other night for an exam and I picked up on several points that I had missed in my notes."
But Lopez admits he skipped one lecture to attend a sonogram examination of his unborn child.
"With the amazing time demands on students here, something that allowed me to do something as significant as seeing my first child for the first time, well, I was grateful," Lopez said."
This is a very good use of technology.
