The School of Dentistry has won an award from Apple Computer for its innovative project that allows dental students to listen to classroom lectures on iPods or other portable listening devices.

The School received a runner-up award in the “Best Mac OS X Automator Workflow” category during Apple’s recent Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Trek Glowacki, a programmer in the School’s Department of Dental Informatics, accepted the award during the annual program.

Since it was launched last September, U-M dental students with valid passwords have been able to download classroom lectures onto an iPod or an MP3 player. Glowacki uses Apple’s software to automate the process of recording the lectures and making them available for students to retrieve from Apple’s iTunes Web site less than 5 minutes after a lecture ends.

Although he put together a considerable amount of information about the school’s initiative for conference organizers to consider, Glowacki says that when he left Ann Arbor, “I had no idea our school would be receiving an award. In fact, when the award was announced, I was in another room and rushed to the main stage to receive it.”

After the awards ceremony ended, Glowacki answered questions from educators who also were at the conference and explained the history, development, and growth of the School of Dentistry project.

Glowacki attended last year’s conference and says his participation in lectures and workshops “enabled me to apply what I learned and build upon what we were doing here.”

Lynn Johnson, the director of Dental Informatics, says, “This award is a highly coveted one that’s presented for truly innovative uses of Apple Computer’s products. But our efforts were just a part of a much larger effort that involved many others, including the University’s Information Technology Central Services as well as Apple Computer.”

Johnson continues to emphasize that listening to the lectures does not replace the need for being in class. “Listening to lectures on an iPod is a safety net,” she says. Students can listen to the lectures on their portable listening devices as frequently as necessary to build on what they have learned in the lectures. The iPod gives dental students the option to slow down portions of a lecture they need to hear again or to quickly bypass those sections they already understand.