University in Texas to Give iPhone, iPod touch to Every Incoming Student
1 March 2008- Hey, They’re Not Just for Listening to Music and Making Phone Calls
- Quizzes and Homework Alerts
- Apple to Use Wi-Fi to Reclaim Educational Market
Many universities require incoming scholars to have a laptop.
Texas’ Abilene Christian University (ACU) is the first American university that will provide an iPhone or iPod Touch to all incoming freshmen next fall. The school will deliver education and information to the Apple gear such as homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors’ offices, and check their meal and account balances plus another 15 Web applications it has developed.
This week ACU CIO Kevin Roberts presented the university’s plans to Apple executives and selected leaders from such universities as Harvard, Yale, MIT, Duke, Stanford, Oxford, Princeton and UCLA at Apple headquarters.
See www.acu.edu/connected
“We enjoy great relationships with many technological leaders such as Apple, AT&T and Amdocs,” ACU executive VP Phil Schubert said. Amdocs provides customer care, billing and order systems for telecommunications carriers and Internet services providers.
The Horizon Report, produced annually as collaboration between the New Media Consortium, which ACU belongs to, and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), provided the following description of the increased use of mobile devices: “More than a billion new mobile devices are being manufactured - a new phone for every six people on the planet. In this market, innovation is unfolding at an unprecedented pace . . . mobiles are quickly becoming the most affordable portable platform for staying networked on the go.”
The 2008 Horizon Report said, “As new devices… are released that make content almost as easy to access and view on a mobile as on a computer, the demand for mobile content will continue to grow. This is more than merely an expectation to provide content: this is an opportunity for higher education to reach its constituents wherever they may be.
Covergence of Laptops & Mobile Phones
If Apple’s Air laptop is an indicator of future trends, as other Apple gear has been in the last few years, the smaller, slimmer, lighter laptops are on their way - with no CD/DVD drive and only Wi-Fi to import and export data and software applications.
This week Lenovo, heir to the ThinkPad brand, introduced a thin Apple Air competitor called the X300. Unlike the Air it offers a full-size, removable battery, an Ethernet jack, a cellular phone modem and a CD\ DVD drive as options. Amazingly, the unit is supposed to support WiMAX in the future.
Laptops are getting smaller and seemingly all have Wi-Fi as a standard feature. A few have the technology that’s needed to access mobile phone networks. Simultaneously, coming from the other direction, mobile phones makers are adding Wi-Fi and functions that were previously found only on PCs - such things as Internet access, browsers, music and video playback, maps, e-mail and the like.
School Days, School Days, Dear Old School Days
Apple’s computers once enjoyed dominance in the educational market.
They were purchased both to teach and for administration applications. By hosting the ACU presentation, Apple shows it’s going after the educational market again - and at all levels from grammar schools to universities. After all, why should little tykes be deprived of using iPhones and iPod touches in their learning?
Indications are that Harvard, MIT and Stanford will run tests with similar applications.
In August 2004 Duke University distributed 20GB iPods to first year students. The findings from the project are at: http://cit.duke.edu/pdf/reports/ipod_initiative_04_05.pdf
The coming software developer’s kit for iPhones and iPod touches will let software programmers develop applications specifically for the educational market - again both for learning and administrative matters.
Also working in Apple’s favor in the educational market is the ubiquity of Wi-Fi networks. Apple has said it wants to make the iPod touch THE platform for Wi-Fi. Every university, it seems, has a Wi-Fi network that students and faculty can use for free. Most coffee shops and many bars, two sites that students visit frequently when off campus, offer free Wi-Fi access. And most of them have Wi-Fi in their off campus cribs and at their parents’ homes.
A number of universities already offer podcasts on various matters including educational topics that students can download and listen to. Many universities participate in Apple’s iTunes University, which allows scholars to download lectures and study aids as easily as songs and videos.
Next week Louisiana State University’s Ambassadors, students who are responsible for incoming freshmen’s orientation, will make a presentation to similar groups from other southern universities on how technology can be used in student orientation. Prominently featured will be podcasts and online videos. That certainly creates an opportunity to sell iPhones and iPod touches.
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