iPod's Required Listening

Many schools ban the use of iPods in school. Teachers will confiscate any ipods they find students using and return them after the school day ends. But José Martí Middle School in Union City New Jersey is actually distributing them to students. As part of the bilingual program at the school, the use of ipods had become part of the curriculum. Spanish speaking students sing along to their favorite songs in English by popular artists such as U2 and Black Eyed Peas. This innovative new ipod program at the school will expand next month when 300 more iPods will be distributed to the Union City Schools as part of a $130,000 experiment in one of New Jersey’s poorest urban school systems. This program has helped kids that come from other countries to learn english at a faster pace. More importantly it is fun. Students enjoy class because they learn the language while enjoying their favorite music. This is also an expensive program. At $250 a piece the silver ipods with built-in video screens are a fairly high tech piece of equipment to be handing out to middle school students every day. So far though, none have been broken or misplaced. This program has proved to have amazing results. One teacher states that her spanish speaking students have been able to move out of bilingual classes after just a year of using the digital devices, compared with an average of four to six years for most bilingual students.

In the fall of 1971 the Bowmar 901B was released to the public. Popularly referred to as the Bowmar Brain, this calculator had four functions and an eight digit display. Measuing 5.2x3x1.5 this new innovative product cost $240. By the end of the decade similar calculators were priced at under ten dollars. This made calculators more affordable to the public and statred being introduced into the classroom. Although there are still disputes about the use of calculators in class they have a similar use as the ipod. They both allow students to learn concepts at a fast pace while still learning the basics. Both of these inventions were a great advance in technology and just as calculators are required in most math classses, eventually the same could happen with the ipod that is currently a device that children regularly are punished for having.