Slashdot Mirror
University Tries "One iPhone Per Student"
alphadogg writes to tell us that one freshman class has a little more than usual to be excited about. When students at Abilene Christian University showed up for their first days of class they were greeted with the choice of either a new iPhone 3g or an iPod Touch plus a package of custom web apps to use on them. "The hardware is part of the Texas university's pilot mobile learning project, which has been gestating for over a year. About 650 first-year students chose the iPhone, and about 300 the iPod Touch, which is a very similar device but without the 3G radio (both devices incorporate an 802.11g Wi-Fi adapter). ACU pays for the hardware, student (or their parents) select and pay for their monthly AT&T service plan."
... is basically doing the same thing ( http://www.oc.edu/apple/ ). They are also offering the choice of a Dell, MacBook, or MacBook Pro. Many of the students here chose the iTouch (including me) simply because they didn't want to pay the expensive monthly fees for the iPhone. My service charge would be $90 per month. I just can't afford that price being a student having other debts to pay off (like college tuition). OC released an enterprise app for our iTouch/iPhone that lets us track things such as events going on, which laundry machines are open (through LaundryView), etc. I think it's pretty neat, but I'm not sure if it's worth the price tag.
If you have an iPhone/iPod Touch you can check out their mobile site at m.acu.edu. Of course you have to have an account to log into the myMobile section.
ACU student here. Either your friend went here a very long time ago, or there's been some kind of miscommunication, because the school doesn't have a "no dancing" policy - if we do, somebody ought to tell the school's swing dance club. There are, however, no real dance halls in Abilene, so it's definitely not easy to find places to do it around here.
ACU teaches that the earth is round, revolves around the sun, and that life evolved via natural selection. The astronomy course I took here didn't even mention the possibility of the earth being young; it was the Big Bang, 4.6 billion year old Earth, etc. "Alternatives" based in pseudo-science and an over-literal reading of Genesis were not even on the table. I've also never had a Bible professor even suggest that the Bible should be treated as a science book - every single one I've talked to on the subject regards the Creation account as metaphorical.
Normally I would have stayed clear of this Apple vs. anti-Apple discussion. However, a sort of irrational bond with my stolen Nokia E65 has prompted me to make the following comments:
With all this, I would have chosen an S60 phone to work with. It also has the other advantage that if you feel that the phone you've chosen at the moment doesn't quite cut it, you can just provide a more powerful phone later, because S60 is going to be around a long time. You can keep going forward with the same software.
The slightly more expensive Nokia N96 matches up to the iPhone in most departments, I think, and it is possible that a much less expensive phone will meet the students' needs. Still, maybe they find it more convenient to code with Apple software, in which case the whole argument is moot.
There are tons of apps that turn the iPhone into a wireless mobile drive. I have one that I got for free that uses webdav to make the iPhone a wireless drive that can play/read/display almost any content my laptop can (audio, doc, spreadsheets, pdfs, etc.) I keep all my syllabi and digital readings on it.
ACU has a tradition of taking calculated risks when it comes to how they do business as an educational institution. This quality is what puts ACU on the map consistently as a leader in education. There are lots of other universities who have tried to pull off programs like this, and many have succeeded. ACU gets this large amount of publicity because it simply is an Apple product that has significant penetration into the student population. Having been involved with the rollout plan for when/how this project was to mature, it could have happened sooner. However, ACU made the decision to wait until there was enough software designed to make this more than just a toy/promotional tool. In fact, the semester before these were handed out several research groups were formed consisting of both students and faculty to determine how these devices could be used most efficiently and even begin to work on their own coding projects to achieve these goals.
These calculated risks are not just in how they were to be used in an educational setting, but also in the technology implementation. It was a significant challenge to provide that large a scale of wireless access. Having worked on it, I must admit that wireless deployment is an artform in how you balance capacity versus coverage with hundreds of environmental factors affecting your decisions. There are many great pieces of software to try and assist you making the optimal placement choices, but they frequently require large amounts of time for data entry for only a minor change in quality. When it boils down to is still the same procedure that has been used for years; deploy 90% of AP, turn it on and survey it, then use the remaining 10% to fill in the holes you missed. Sofar, most of the risky decisions that were made appear to have payed off and leave only a known portion to be expanded in the future.
I'm proud to have graduated from this university in May and have the privilege of working with the IS department for several years.
There is a choice. They could opt to get the iPod Touch which doesn't require any extra service. On top of that, they're building an infrastructure to have WiFi everywhere, which means that everyone will be able to use the resources that they're going to create for classes.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.