Duke to scale back mass iPod giveaway

Only students in selected classes to get free gadgets

An iPod in every new student's hand? Not this year at Duke. The private university in Durham has decided not reprise last year's experimental mass handout to all incoming freshman of the pricey hard-disk portable digital players.

After a preliminary report on the project, Duke now plans to issue iPods to students enrolled in selected classes. Tracy Futhey, Duke's vice president for information technology, said the scope will depend on the demand from faculty.

In a memo to faculty, Peter Lange, the university's provost and senior academic officer, said the administration was pleased with how the free iPod project encouraged faculty and students "to consider new ways of using the technology in fields from engineering to foreign languages."
(MSNBC, 4/7/05)

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tags: educational technology, ipod, technology