On the Duke Digital Initiative

Educational technology orthodoxy sez, "Better the devil you know." But let's ask the devil we don't.

(This is mildly terrifying.)

In 2005, Duke University did something that made its freshman class as happy as Microsoft shareholders weren't: it gave each freshman (about 1,600, total) a 20gb iPod pre-loaded with orientation material and rigged with a voice recorder. In 2006, Duke made iPods available to all undergraduates in specific courses upon the request of faculty members.

Evaluating the initiative, Duke noted the following benefits:
- Reduced dependence upon physical materials
- Flexible access to digital class resources, independent of lab and library hours
- Convenient digital recording of interviews, lectures, notes, and oral assignments
- Greater student engagement and interest in discussions, labs, and projects
- Enhanced individual leaning support

And remember: these iPods, compared to the current iteration, were practically dinosaurs. Rather, they were dinosaurs with significant sensory impairments -- no graphics, no video, no wifi, no app store (and maybe I've mentioned something about free Ivy League college in your pocket?) -- and fragile brains, prone to aneurysm. We're talking basic text/audio functionality and a spinning magnetic hard drive all too happy to crash and delete that one Norah Jones album you couldn't avoid in 2004.

But the experiment was successful enough to give birth to the Duke Digital Initiative, whose stated mission is to "promote innovative and effective teaching, to use technology in support of curriculum enhancement, to develop our technology infrastructure and to share knowledge about effective instructional technology strategies." In 2007 and 2008, DDI experimented with limited distribution of tablet PCs. In 2009? High-def video cameras, camera-enabled flip-phones, and webcams. You can read more about how that turned out here and here. (SPOILER ALERT: it turned out well.)

My college, on the other hand, has a scanner in the computer lab. So, you know, we got that going for us.