About the iPod Experience
The iPod experience at Brandeis grew out of a pilot project during the Spring of 2005. Students in Mark Auslander's Anth133a course, Tradition and the Contemporary Experience in Sub-Saharan Africa, developed an experimental podcasting project, to share their audio content over the internet with iPod users. Each student in the class developed an audio segment for a tour of the Body Maps exhibition at the Women's Study Research Center. Each segment accompanied one of the Body Map paintings by a group of HIV-positive women in South Africa.
The project was conceived, developed and implemented in one month and culminated in a panel discussion with Shulamit Reinharz, Founding Director of the Women's Studies Research Center, Mark Auslander, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in African Art and Aesthetics and Lecturer in African & Afro-American Studies, and Perry Hanson, Chief Information Officer, as well as the students from the course. For more information about this project and to download the audio guides please visit the Reflections on Africa course blog.
Building on the success of our Spring 2005 Podcasting Project, in the Fall of 2005 we provided iPods with iTalk recording attachments to Mark Auslander's ANTH155a course, Museums and Public Memory. While partnering with the West Medford Afro-American Remembrance Project (WMAARP), as well as the Medford Historical Society, we developed segments of an audio walking tour of Historic West Medford, and podcast them so interested persons might walk around the neighborhood, listening on their ipods or MP3 players, to segments that combine student commentary, and interviews with community members and historians. This project also includes some exhibition materlals on the early history of leading community members. Once again, digital audio proved to be an important component of the project. To read more about this project visit the Museums and Public Memory course blog
This Spring 2006 in Urban Anthropology (ANTH 158a), students are using iPods (with iTalk) and digital cameras, to record interviews with people about their perceptions of urban spaces, focusing on what they see as safe and dangerous places. The digital cameras will be used as framing and eliciting devices: students will be taking photos of various urban locales and asking informants to describe and assess what's happening in them; they will also have informants take photos of various locales and then have them explain why they think the places are safe or dangerous. After recording informants, students will use software (Audacity) to edit the interviews, which will then be incorporated into the papers they write and posted to WebCT our course management system.
This program would not be possible if it wasn't for the dedicated faculty and students who have been more than willing to try something new. Thanks to these iPod faculty and students, Brandeis is a leading institution in bringing new technology into the classroom.