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Jump to: What is iPodject | Who is Josh Mika | Template Design

iPodject is a Naperville Educational Foundation grant co-authored by Josh Mika, Mary Kienstra, and her 4th grade Project Idea class. The grant requested five video iPods, an external hard drive, and a variety of audiobooks for Beebe Elementary during the 2007-2008 school year. UPDATE January 2008 - a local businessman and Beebe parent donated twenty, 30 GB video iPods to the mix! This changed the game completely and we currently we have twenty-five iPods. The hardware focus of iPodject is to fill the remaining five and make a class set of thirty.

At its core, iPodject is the exploration of the educational use of iPods in the elementary classroom. Guided by LRC Director Josh Mika, iPodject seeks to integrate audio, video, text, and games into a single package available for intra-school checkout only. Each iPod contains a variety of self-created and self-published student content. Some of the content is available at this site, although the names of the owners have been removed for safety.

Originally, the iPodject companion site was planned to be an interactive Flash-based experience. However, due to time (Winter Break 2007), personal life, and pusuit of a doctorate in education, for now it will be solely an XHTML experience. As time permits, updates and changes incorporating Flash will occur.

After eight years teaching fourth and fifth grade in the self-contained classroom, Josh Mika is currently the LRC Director at Beebe Elementary in Naperville, IL. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Knox College and a Master of Education degree from Cambridge College. He currently is working towards a Doctorate of Education: Curriculum & Instruction through Aurora University, studying iPods in education.

"At the suggestion of Tony Vincent and Mark Hooft, I have created an iPodject blog to identify the challenges and rewards of using iPods in the classroom. I have also included or created any materials that will help teachers, such as myself, help make iPods an integral part of the educational experience." --Josh Mika 1-27-2008

This design was created by Chris Blunden, alias Vacant and submitted to Open Source Web Design in 2004. The original design, deep, was written in XHMTL 1.0 Strict and the corresponding cascading style sheet was altered to suit the needs of the project. Any changes in design were done by Josh Mika in order to meet the online needs of iPodject. The site was created and launched in January 2008.

Updated: January, 2008