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University Tries "One iPhone Per Student"
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Oct 13, 2008 02:27 PM
from the enrollment-and-dropout-numbers-to-spike dept.
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."
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Rates (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't know that the iPod or iPhone was limited to one OS. That's so very odd...
Oh wait, it's not. Get off you anti-Apple soapbox and grow up a bit.
This is similar to a grant awarded to the 7-8 Jr. High School I teach at to give every student a Palm for a year. Didn't work too well, but then again, the software we had wasn't what we needed, we had minimal support, and 12~14 year olds are considerably more immature than college freshmen... Well, maybe not that much less mature, but you get the point.
Re:Rates (Score:5, 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:
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.
Parent
Re:Rates (Score:4, Insightful)
Fair enough, I should have said, "limited to being used with one OS." Out of fairness, can you name me any other small internet enabled device that is not a "netbook" that can run multiple OS's? Everything I can think of that falls in this class of device (PDA-ish or MP3 player with additional features) is locked to a propriety OS, be it OSX, WinCE, Palm, or something else. Very rarely can you change it out, even if it is an Android phone. It's still limited to what it came with. Perhaps the people in charge of this decision went for a combination of an OS they could get software for fairly easy, a decent UI, and a piece of tech that has something of a "cool" factor to entice students to spend their college money at their private institution.
Parent
Re:Rates (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Rates (Score:5, Interesting)
They do have their choice of music player and phone. The students would just have to buy it themselves. The purpose of this program isn't to provide a music player or a phone. The purpose is to provide a mobile platform that provides support for their custom apps, a web browser that's usable for research on the go, and a video player that integrates with iTunes U for podcast video content of lectures and support material. You could halfway do some of that with a device from another manufacturer, but you'd have to work at it and it would always be a kludge. Think of it as the school providing a learning tool that just happens to come with your choice of a free music player or a free phone.... :-)
P.S. AFAIK, iTunes should work in recent versions of Wine, complete with iPod/iPhone syncing.
Parent
Re:Rates (Score:5, Insightful)
Abilene has had this program for a long time now. They piloted it on the original iPhone, and were Apples poster-child for demonstrating the iPhone as a platform.
And no, in their case, it makes no bloody sense at all to allow multiple-OSs. They have developed the iPhone to the hilt, integrating everything from school maps, class schedules, class notes, recordings of classes, messaging, notices, etc., all into one integrated platform. There is no way they could have accomplished the same thing on mobile devices if they had to support mixed platforms, without making it both harder to use, run slower on mobile devices, and a support nightmare. The iPhone provided them an ideal opportunity, and they took it. More power to them.
Could they have gone open? Sure. If Android had been available already, perhaps they would have gone that direction. But you can be sure that even if they went open, they would have settled on ONE platform for the same reasons as noted above.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider this - Until the iPhone there was no practical device of the kind for browsing the web, with the full power of the web. As noted many times in this article, all previous generations of mobile browsers sux0r.
Kind of pointless to talk about supporting other platforms when there are, as yet, no other platforms to support (speaking of the mobile web, that is). They say, in the article, that they can always evaluate Android later.
Coming... (Score:5, Funny)
...to ebay in 3...2...
Re:Coming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, I have some classes where internet access is more or less a must, but I'd rather have a nice, full keyboard and a reasonable screen that I can put my own software on rather than being shoved a piece of hardware required by the university. Give options, don't mandate one (or two nearly identical) devices.
Parent
Re:Coming... (Score:4, Funny)
I don't think those examples warrant the word "extremely". Perhaps you meant to say "moderately" or "slightly" or "not".
Parent
Why not give them WoW accounts too? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why not give them WoW accounts too? (Score:5, Funny)
And beer, don't forget the beer.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Even betterer! I'm currently building an MMO for the iPhone!
What about those monthly fees? (Score:3, Insightful)
Much better to give them a Eee PC (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be much more productive to give them a lightweight PC and free, Campus-wide WiFi so they can call people via VOIP.
Re:What about those monthly fees? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just...read the article. Okay? Answers all this. They didn't just do this at random; the question of laptops is discussed.
One example of what they're doing: (from the first page, I think): an interactive map, useful for the new students to find their way around campus in the first week.
Okay, another example: used for real-time polls conducted in classes.
Not necessarily anything that couldn't be done with a laptop, but please, read the article and then we can have a semi-intelligent discussion on the actual issues?
Parent
What about those slashdot arguments? (Score:3, Informative)
I really don't see any issue. It's a private institution doing an experiment that just might work out for other institutions. Also for those who read the article it mentions that the apps are designed so that in the future one could go with a different phone. So once again audience, where's the problem?
Intriguing Idea (Score:5, Interesting)
When I first heard about this idea a few months ago, I knew that there would be some interesting consequences. Being that I graduated from ACU in December of '06, I know many of the people involved and have heard stories about what it takes to accomplish such a task.
ACU had to re-implement much of it's wireless structure in order to accommodate all of the new devices and ensure that students would have wireless coverage at every conceivable place on campus.
It will be interesting to see how it pans out and whether or not it works as well as the faculty and staff have envisioned.
ESR would be proud (Score:5, Insightful)
The Cathedral [apple.com] versus the Bazaar [google.com].
Why all the hate (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure the majority will use it to goof off, but it's possible a couple resourceful students come up with something useful and everybody gains. Is it the absolute best way to use resources, maybe not; but it's quite a neat capable platform and only time will tell what interesting things students can come up with.
Yea, free happy meal toy with your diploma. (Score:4, Insightful)
thank goodness! (Score:4, Funny)
The title made me worry that we were only allowed to have a single iPhone per person. And I thought it was just some more unnecessary University restrictions.
Who pays? (Score:5, Insightful)
ACU pays for the hardware
No they don't. Whoever pays the students' fees pays for it, plus any admin charge the university adds for overseeing the moving around of the money.
Oklahoma Christian University... (Score:5, Informative)
Freshmen forced to pay for Ipods... (Score:3, Interesting)
The real headline should be something along the lines of freshmen class of Abilene Christian University all required to pay for brand new iPhones.
When I read the "New York Times Says Thin Clients Are Making a Comeback" headline, I thought of cellphone/pda apps. Considering books cost me around $300 a semester back in 1996-2000 and all the other ways that the university tried to leech a buck off my family, I'm not surprised that a college is doing something like this. This sounds and looks like a decent killer app for cell phones/PDAs.
I'm kinda sad though. I'd have thought that we'd have figured out how to get all this done, and my kids using this in elementary school right now. I'm really sad that colleges are just now getting there. I remember back in 1998 when my college just started their web app for signing up for classes. It was much, much better than their telephone system that they'd used before hand. We loved it.
My kids public school has a web app that'll show their 9 weeks grades and an event calendar. O.k. it's nice that they have anything, but still as a parent and tax payer, I'd want all their text books to be in pdf and able to be saved, viewed, printed, quoted from anywhere. I'd also want teachers grade books and PTA meetings online as well. There is a part of me that thinks class rooms need forums or a school running their own version of facebook, yet geared more along the lines of keeping track of all of a student's progress, projects, entire school history, homework, quizes, & test history for everything there, and doing it as a glorified year book. Especially to pound it into the student's head, that this is to make you and us look "good"! ;)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
as a parent and tax payer, I'd want all their text books to be in pdf and able to be saved, viewed, printed, quoted from anywhere.
This alone would have been awesome back in the early 90's. We had BBS's back then. Since the students weren't allowed to go to our lockers (Lockers can hide drugzngunz!) during the day, we had to carry all of our books everywhere. Leaving the books in the classrooms, then dialing a school BBS to read the material at home would have been uber-cool.
So Much For... (Score:4, Insightful)
m.acu.edu (Score:3, Informative)
Tuition (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone's saying this is a waste of money, but with tuition as much as it is, this is a drop in the bucket compared to what the students will be paying for their degrees. Do you think anybody will notice if their tuition went up 300 bucks over 4 years to cover the cost of these devices, that may have many benefits for their classes, such as easy class lookup and registration, online syllabus and course notes that are available with you all the time, and so on and so forth. When the teachers could rely on everybody having access to this stuff instead of just a few students, teachers can actually use the devices to improve their classes.
Re:Tuition (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Parent
It's all about progressiveness (Score:3, Informative)
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.
And they get away with it... (Score:5, Insightful)
because every time the cost goes up, the politicians go all "rising costs of education!!!" and give them more money. My econ prof called it the "cookie monster" effect. Colleges go "Me want cookie!!!!" and spend $$$ on this, and super-fancy new buildings with HD video projectors in every classroom, and clubhouses for their sports teams, and what-not... om nom nom nom.... and, when they're done, there's another cookie there waiting for them! Rinse and repeat. Wonderful incentive structure there, no? Mmmmhmm....
Parent
Donors (Score:3, Informative)
Usually it's the donors who give a large chunk of building costs that decide the new facilities should be super-fancy.
And they have to one-up each other too, so you could also blame the competition.
Re:And they get away with it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that depends on whether your goal was to have the Feds fund a really nice stadium, a brand-new library building full of Internets, a student body full of iPhones, and HD projectors in every classroom.... or simply providing young adults with an affordable high-quality college education. At a minimum it's not really proving that good at addressing Affordability.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You fail at Business 101.
Don't think in terms of "what", think "what for" - I don't really care what my tax dollars are spent on, as long as it helps the purpose, in this case of education. If iPhones do and the cost/benefit analysis works out (which might require a trial to test, that's fine) then that's ok with me. If HD projectors do, fine thing. Heck, if a daily blowjob for every student does, I'd be ok with that.
On the surface "more books" might sound like it's "more educational". But that's the surfac
Affordability? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course its affordable, as it gets more expensive the government chips in more and raises the limit of the loans it will back.
That has been the problem with college level education and health care. As soon as the government stepped in and started paying for things at set rates without asking questions the competitive market failed. The price of admission became "cost + what the government was willing to chip in".
We have some of the best tax payer funded education in the world but too many don't realize
Re:It's crap like this... (Score:5, Insightful)
No I think it is due more to poor administration of funds.
In my undergrad this was the case:
Every Department gets a budget. If they don't fully use that budget then the next year their budget will get cut. This created an effect where departments will wast money on a whole bunch of little things just so they can get more next year. So say the computer science department will need to find a way to spend 20k each year so they will have money budgeted for when their computers actually get out of date.
Then there are professors who keep their door locked and closed during their office hours so they won't be bothered (while they are getting paid)
Spending millions of dollars on these big events to attract politicians and other big names to boost up the prestigious level of the college. Putting in new "High Tech" Buildings where they just need some more internet cable spread across the building...
Parent
It's idiots like you... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we get some realistic math for once? Attending a private school like ACU costs close to $110K for four years [acu.edu]. A fancy $300 PDA doesn't even begin to account for that.
Also, colleges now rely heavily on the web and email for communicating with students. Bulletins, class schedules, online study materials, web-based paperwork... It's efficient and cheap. This works better if everybody has a standard device that works the same way with the campus WiFi network. Usually, colleges accomplish this by making all the students buy a standard laptop or tablet.
That route makes sense to me, but I can guess why the ACU people went the PDA route. People take their PDAs everywhere, so ACU can get information out to the entire student body quickly. That makes for a convenient fact to cite when parents want to know what the school is doing to prevent another Virginia Tech.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You might catch a few people before they go in harm's way ...
Didn't I meet you during the design meetings for the Titanic? You were the one that said, "Liveboats are useless, they won't stop the ship from sinking."
Re:It's idiots like you... (Score:4, Interesting)
There has been a shift in security information delivery systems in universities lately, in response to the VTech problems. My university has installed centrally controlled LCD screens in the highly trafficked areas on campus. This is another such method of enabling rapid deployment of important information. If every student has a PDA, the university can know for sure that security bulletins can be delivered quickly.
So actually, yes. This can prevent another attack.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
One can only hope that the college bubble bursts like all others do. College costs are more than slightly linked to the housing boom. People could draw more credit from their house than before in order to send to ludicrously priced colleges, so tutions went crazy. This is no longer the case. Now its a matter of convincing the administrations that they know longer have the money pool available and need to actually think about running on a realistic budget.
Unfortunately, this sort of thing is slow to react.
Re:Who's sleeping with who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Pssst. There nothing in Christianity that would prevent someone from going dancing, unless by 'Christianity' you mean something other than living your life according to the principles espoused by the figure known as 'Christ' in the Gospels and accepting that same person as your 'personal Lord and Savior' (whatever that may mean for you).
Full disclosure: I was once but am no longer Christian; however, I understand more about Christianity than most people who would call themselves 'Christian'.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh I do agree with you. I am a christian and even go to church.
ACU is just a very strict school and there belief system says that dancing is bad.
I felt bad for my friend because she choose to go to that school yet felt the need to had the fact that she liked to go out dancing.
But that is just me but I am with you that I don't think that there is anything immoral with dancing. I just try to respect others faith even if I don't share it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh it was about 20 years ago. Maybe it was just her. Very sweet girl and a good friend.
So yes it was a long time ago and there could have been some miscommunication. Maybe it was that she was going out dancing at a club that served alcohol?
The orginal post had nothing to do with dancing. I was posting that an application that would tell you who was sleeping with whom at ACU should be.
a. Useless
or
b. a directory of married students.
Of course I could be overly optimistic.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)