KEY POINTS:
Maori is the first indigenous language freed from the "tyranny" of old technology as Auckland University of Technology leads the push to digitise te reo.
AUT students will be the first in the country to use their media players to download for free work and animations based on linguist Professor John Moorfield's Te Whanake textbooks.
Other podcasts for students are planned to tie into a Maori Television series under production.
They'll also be able to send back oral assessments via their players to tutors - work that is completed in many institutes on tapes.
While "romance" languages such as French or Italian have made use of podcasts, Maori is the first indigenous language in the world to do so.
Over the past three years the university has worked with Apple's Renaissance on the podcast side of the project - and Associate Professor Pare Keiha, dean of Te Ara Poutama (the faculty of Maori development), said the result had put them at the "bleeding edge" of teaching second languages.
Developing world best-practice second-language resources meant they had to be accessible to the Bebo and Facebook generations, he said. "It makes it more mobile - it's sort of sexy. If we can make learning sexy, we will.
"We have freed people from the tyranny of the tapes. It used to be you had to physically go to language labs, listen, stop, press record, do it all over, find the right place. And then teachers had to do the same thing."
Non-students will also benefit from the initiative because the animated movies and interactive exercises, which give instant oral feedback, are also online at the Te Whanake site for free.
The format could be copied by other cultures trying to retain their languages.
Professor Keiha said more academics should use the platform to spread knowledge - and they should bear in mind the cost of accessing that information.
Professor Moorfield, who has spent more than 20 years working in the field, started the Te Whanake website at Otago University at a cost of $450,000.
