If there is one racing certainty in the world of technology, it is that sometime this year Apple will announce that it has sold its 100 millionth iPod. Indeed, by December 2006, a little more than five years after its launch, there were already 88m of the fashionable little personal music players in use.

Perhaps what is equally surprising is that more than half of those iPods are being used to watch videos and read documents as well as listen to the latest hit song, according to Pascal Cagni, vice-president and general manager for Apple in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. All of which presents a dilemma and an opportunity for business schools: how can they use the power of the latest sound and video technology to improve the learning process?

HEC Paris has gone further than most in using the technology in the classroom – and outside it. Valérie Gauthier, HEC MBA director and associate dean of the school, says it is about the learning rather than the technology. “The technology is really easy. It is about the content.”

Since HEC began working with Apple in late 2005 – the project launched in March 2006 – the biggest push has been in using the technology in and around the classroom. Some of the classes, particularly those that have a lot of technical content, have been recorded so that students can watch them again – some students, especially those operating in a second language, may find the subject matter easier to absorb if they watch it several times.

But some professors have also devised ways of supplementing their lectures with material that can be used in preparation, or as follow-up, or even additional, more difficult lectures for students who wish to stretch themselves. Enhancing the face-to-face learning process, not replacing it, has been key to HEC’s approach.

“The tool emphasises the quality of the face-to-face contact,” says Professor Gauthier.

Some professors have also recorded question and answer sessions. Financial accounting is one topic where this approach has proven successful.

One of the more exciting developments though, says Prof Gauthier, is in helping students develop communications skills such as giving presentations or working in teams. Professors at HEC have always given students on the MBA programme time-consuming coaching. These days professors are helped by having video footage of the students when they are giving class presentations or working in groups – making videos of the latter is optional. “This does not replace the face-to-face coaching but allows professors when they are doing the coaching to be more qualitative,” says Prof Gauthier.

It also enables students to watch themselves and evaluate their skills. The podcasting has been critical in helping determine what extra training the students need.

The technology can also be used for administrative tasks and for student-to-student communication –- for club information, for example. One such group is the podcast club, which has 15 student participants. They work with professors to develop new ways of using the technology and, perhaps not surprisingly, it often ends up with the students teaching the professors. “The kids teach the parents,” as Mr Cagni puts it.

Other business schools and universities are using the technology in an innovative way too. Some are using iPod technology to send marketing information to prospective students rather than paper brochures. Others are using it to enable professors, often equipped with just a mobile phone, to send lectures or other information when they are travelling overseas.

And business schools are now considering how they can keep in contact with alumni, either supplying basic news to them or enabling them to update their skills and knowledge by, say, watching the latest courses as delivered to the MBA class. The possibilities are endless, says Prof Gauthier.

The journey is not cheap however. The process requires television equipment with broadband connections in at least some of the auditoriums and Apple servers to store the material. But both HEC and Apple believe it has been a positive investment.