iPods and Education

Could iPods really be used for educational purposes? When i firsts heard of this I was a bit skeptical because I have an iPod and I defiantly do not use it for any type of educational purpose. But according to Duke University they can be. In 2007 Duke University gave 1600 students ipods fully equipped with voice recorders and notepads built in. The purpose of this was "to encourage creative uses of technology in education and campus life...". To me this is true because we are growing up in a more technological time and the use of computers and laptops are taking the places of pens and paper. But there are some cons to this. They still play music for one. This is bad because I myself would be tempted to play music in class as suppose to using my iPod for educational uses.
The University also states in on their Mission Statement that there are many benefits to Ipod usage in school. Some examples were the time flexibility, interest level of learning goes up, and the simplicity of it to use for interviews. All these are very impressive and makes me re-think the whole thing, but my opinion still stands that its probably not that good of an idea. I just feel that we have enough technology that helps us in all these fields that we really don't need the iPod for our classes. If this "tool" is that important I am sure Office Depot sells a device that can preform all the functions the Ipod can without the use of playing music. Again i feel its a valid argument, but just not plausible for the uses of education.