MLB discovers the iPod

June 19th, 2006 | by Tim Wilson |

ESPN has an interested article about how a few major league baseball players have discovered that their video iPods are giving them a competitive advantage. Hitters are using video iPods to analyze their swings and pitchers are studying batters to look for weaknesses. From the article:

The Rockies have downloaded video clips into the iPods of 14 players so far. For the hitters, they’ll store every at-bat and download performances of upcoming pitchers. A 60-gigabyte iPod can hold roughly five seasons’ worth of a player’s at-bats. Pitchers can get all their performances, along with opponents’ at-bats.

Of course these ballplayers aren’t taking the time to create their own iPod video playlists. They’ve got “people” for that. If they can use this technology, then all kinds of high school athletes could benefit too. With a simple iPod microphone, music and speech students could record rehearsals for later review. Throw in teacher-produced podcasts of lessons, labs, or extra study materials (don’t forget that you can podcast documents!) and you’ve got the makings of a digital learning interface that most students would crave.

ipod, digital learning, video

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  1. 3 Responses to “MLB discovers the iPod”

  2. By Brian on Jun 19, 2006 | Reply

    This is great. As I write about the differences between handhelds (a.k.a. - PDAs) and iPods I have been weighing the benefits of both. This is a very practical way to use the iPod with video. As you write, it is not the players that are creating the playlists, but there are so many batters and pitchers that the professionals face it makes it so much time consuming. At the high school level, as you mention, it is more a reality for student-athletes to put video on their iPod. Wrestlers watching an opponent’s style, football players watching formations, any athlete analyzing their technique, I can see it happening more and more. I’ll be blogging about this at http://www.mobilemind-ed.com soon.

  3. By J.C. on Mar 2, 2007 | Reply

    How soon can we get actual MLB games available for the iPod?

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