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For months Sophie McDonell lived in fear that her dog would eat her homework. It was more than just a clichéd excuse – her math teacher had downloaded tutorials onto an MP3 player and her dog Teddy, a one-year-old Airedale terrier, had a taste for bite-sized gadgets.

Sophie, now a 13-year-old Grade 8 student at Cardinal Carter Academy for the Arts, was part of a pilot project in which students were given MP3 players uploaded with a playlist of math and computer science tutorials.

The initiative, which led to improved student participation and marks, was developed by a pair of Toronto teachers and it's catching on – a school in a remote part of New Brunswick started using video podcasts this year as a way of supplementing and providing extra classes to students. A teacher from Saskatchewan who developed video podcast math lessons was recognized last week at Microsoft's 2009 Innovative Teachers Forum, and the Toronto teachers, Catherine Kong and Lorenzo Rossi, have been invited to the 2010 forum in Singapore.

In the fall of 2008, Ms. Kong and Mr. Rossi were looking for a way that students at Cardinal Carter, a highly competitive visual and performing arts school, could study at their own pace on their own time between dance classes, play rehearsals, studio time or music lessons. Many had full class schedules jam-packed with arts classes and didn't have a space in their timetables for classes like computer science.

Worried that Internet classes came with too many distractions, like Web surfing and chat rooms, the teachers had the idea to build and download lessons to an MP3 player. They submitted a proposal to Microsoft and the company donated 70 Zunes to the project.

“When I first got it I thought it was a regular MP3 player, but there was no music and it had all these lessons on it,” said Andrea Zukowski, 13, a Grade 8 student who was also in Ms. Kong's math class last year.

Andrea and Sophie's lessons were complemented by an assortment of five- to 15-minute PowerPoint presentations paired with Ms. Kong's voice on topics such as integers, measurement and mnemonics such as BEDMAS.

Edward Betton, 17, was one of 35 students who took an entire computer science course on an MP3 player. He needed to take the class last year as a prerequisite for a computer-game design course but his timetable was filled with other courses he needed for his university applications.

Mr. Rossi developed a series of video podcast lectures and downloaded them to MP3 players. Mr. Betton, a drama student, watched them and completed the assignments on his own time, sometimes between play rehearsals.

“I could watch them anywhere – at home, in the car. It was nice to always have a lesson in your pocket,” he said.

In his 24 years as a teacher, Mr. Rossi had never seen more favourable results: The computer class's average was 93 per cent.

“This is the YouTube generation, they like watching things on small gadgets, they like being mobile,” said Sidney Eve Matrix, a professor with Queen's University's Film and Media Department who makes her lectures available to students online as video podcasts. “So if we meet them where they're at, they're much more likely to plug in and be engaged.”

University professors have been converting audio and video recordings of classrooms for years, but developing MP3 player-specific classes for high school students is relatively new. Still, Ms. Matrix cautioned that these tools shouldn't replace the classroom.

Mr. Rossi said the video podcasts are ideal for students who can't fit certain classes into their timetable.

Those with questions stopped Mr. Rossi in the hallway and he would use a handheld attachment to project the MP3 player's screen onto a nearby wall.

“Often they could answer them on their own by using the rewind button, but when students did come to me with questions, they were coming with fewer questions and better questions,” he said.