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University Tries "One iPhone Per Student"

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the enrollment-and-dropout-numbers-to-spike dept.

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."

2 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. Oklahoma Christian University... by Auxis · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... 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.

  2. Re:Rates by argiedot · · Score: 4, Informative

    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:

    • A Symbian S60 based smartphone (and there are quite a few out there) has the advantage of being easy to synchronise on Windows, OS X, and Linux with minimal adjustment (the last I knew of the iPhone, you had to jailbreak to be able to do Linux. If this is not true anymore, please ignore this comment).
    • S60 is an established, stable, platform and is used by more than just Nokia (Panasonic, LG? Some others I cannot remember). All APIs are publicly documented and parts of the source are available to developers (AFAIK).
    • Nokia has announced that it plans to open-source Symbian and the associated platforms: S60 and UIQ.

    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.