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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent

Duke tones down iPod handouts

At the start of the academic year, Duke University handed out 20GB iPods to all of its new students in an attempt to help them out in a variety of ways.

Next year they'll be scaling back the project, though:

Rather than handing a 20GB iPod to every incoming student, as it did this year, only those attending courses that have integrated the device into the study programme will be furnished with Apple's music player.

Considering that only 16 out of the 1,000 courses at Duke were using the iPod, the decision to cut back on the seeding of the device is perhaps not surprising.

Provost Peter Lange said: "We weren't sure what to expect when we launched this project, but we've been pleased by how it's succeeded in encouraging many faculty and students to consider new ways of using the technology in fields from engineering to foreign languages."



The experiment was costly (half a million dollars apparently) and less than 40% of students were in classes that used the iPod.

But still, it's not ditching the programme completely.

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