Interesting blog post about iPod as language lab

I got a link to this blog post over my Twitter feed from @techforschools and had to share.  It's called "iPod Touch as Language Lab."

A couple of years ago I saw a language lab rep at a conference and of course got all in a tizzy about language labs.  He hasn't visited my school yet but I talked to my admins about having him in and I got an estimate - $27,000 for 14 stations.  I was basically told to keep dreaming, but that was fine; I at least wanted them to know I wanted one in case someone designated a large gift to the school for foreign language (I teach at a private school).

Then I started thinking about how I could turn our laptop computer lab into a listening lab with microphones and software.  But we have computer classes in there in the afternoon, and I can't take my classes there, which is a significant obstacle.  Then we thought, well, what we really need is a mobile laptop lab, but because of our elevator/stairs situation, it would only be usable by part of our school.  Not a great option either.

So now I'm nearly sold on the idea of having a set of iPods to use as sort of a mobile computer lab.  I've decided I need to be really crazy about an idea and know enough about it to conduct training on it to really get serious about asking to allocate funds for it, but the more posts I see like this, the more crazy I become.

It's a good sort of loca though.