Learning the iPod Way
by Dana Alan Koch

You’ve seen them—they’re everywhere. Little electronic gizmos that seem to be connected directly to the brain through the ear. Almost every teenager wants one or has one, and they’re considered “staple” items for college and high school students. Millions of iPods are invading our society at a dramatic rate.

While these devices were initially seen as a way to listen to music, they are quickly coming of age as people use them to listen to audio books, newscasts, talk shows, speeches, and more. For example, you can go to American rhetoric.com to download famous speeches like Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream.” Looking for free audio books for the kids? Visit storynory.com and choose from dozens of selections, including classic fairytales like Cinderella and The Gingerbread Man. You can even download free courses from top universities like Stanford (itunes.stanford.edu) or Massachusetts Institute of Technology (ocw.mit.edu)—better known as M.I.T.

The Church also makes thousands of audio files available for free download from lds.org, including:

• The Standard Works
• Ensign, Friend and New Era magazines from 2004 to present
• Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage
• General Conference talks from 2003 to present
• Songs from the Children’s Songbook, Hymns, and other specialty music
• Select leadership broadcasts
• Select CES Firesides

Through sites like BYU Broadcasting (byubroadcasting.org) you can download, again for free:

• “Classic” devotional speeches given between 1949 and 1999
• Select Women’s Conference broadcasts
• Select Education Week presentations from 1996 to the present
• David M. Kennedy for International Studies lectures

If your audio player of choice is an iPod, you can subscribe to “podcasts” and have current devotionals, classic devotionals, and other recordings automatically loaded onto your player when you synchronize.

Here are some ways our family has used this marvelous device to learn the gospel:

• My twelve-year-old daughter recently asked if I could download the Book of Mormon in audio format to her player. She has used that to read along with her Book of Mormon.

• My wife takes her MP3 player with her on her morning walks. When she gets home, she plugs it into a pair of speakers so she can finish listening to what she started on her walk as she works in the kitchen.

• As I prepare for talks or lessons, I look for speeches or conference addresses that relate to my topic and then listen to them as I cut the grass or go on a walk. This familiarizes me with the topic and allows time to think through the subject.

Just a few years ago we could not conceive of this type of powerful device. It has helped our family continue to feel connected to our fellow Saints throughout the Church and to our BYU days. They have also helped us in a world of ever-increasing pace, to multi-task while learning the gospel—the iPod Way!

LDS Living Magazine, Jan/Feb Issue