Christian University Tempts Students with Free Apple IPhones

If you are a committed Christian, and yet also worship Apples' Steve Jobs, then you will be able to combine your faiths by enrolling at the USA's Abilene Christian University where new students are to be given an iPhone when they start lessons this coming autumn.

At ACU freshmen will use the iPhones or iPod Touches to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors' offices, and check their meal and account balances - among more than 15 other useful web applications already developed, said ACU Chief Information Officer Kevin Roberts.

"We are not merely providing cutting-edge technology tools to our incoming students," said Roberts. "We are also providing the web applications that ensure these tools will become critical to the students' learning experience. Because 93 percent of ACU students bring their own computers with them to college, we are choosing to take them to the next level by providing converged mobile devices."

For a number of years, ACU's faculty and technology staff have researched strategic opportunities presented by handheld devices in higher education, said Roberts. However, for the past six months, ACU's intensive research has focused on more than 30 projects exploring pioneering mobile learning strategies for enhancing the campus environment.

The 2008 Horizon Report stated, "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."

The Horizon Report, produced annually as a collaboration between the New Media Consortium (of which ACU is a member) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), also described the explosion of converged media technology. "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."

Posted to the site on 27th February 2008