School Gives iPhones To Incoming Freshmen
May 16, 2008 – 7:00 am
You’ve most likely never heard of Abilene Christian University before, but this week they put themselves on the map by becoming the first school in the U.S. to offer iPhones for incoming students. Offering the new technology is not just some kind of gimmick to get more studetns at the school, its actually an attempt to make the campus more connected and take advantage of mobile education opportunities.
According to ACU’s website, all the iPhones are preprogrammed with several applications desinged specifically for its students, such as course schedules and syllabi, eBooks, and campus maps. Professors have also been trained how to incorporate the devices into learning opportunities by using them to do real-time class surveys, podcast their lectures, and create content aggregators (wikis) for individual classes.
Creating a “connected” infrastructure like this is an innovative, hands-on method for preparing students to be successful in the ever changing world of technology, and I’m sure more schools will be following ACU’s lead in the near future.
-JH
You must be logged in to post a comment.