Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Apple unveils interactive textbooks, revamped iTunes U

The iBooks 2 app is available for free.

Apple might make the heavy backpack an endangered species.

There won’t be much students can’t do with a few taps and swipes of their Apple iPads after the tech giant’s introduction of iBooks 2–a book store that now includes interactive textbooks–and an iTunes University app that could create a comprehensive school experience inside the popular computer tablet.

Apple officials confirmed Jan. 19 weeklong speculation that the company would jump into the textbook market during a press event at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, where Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, introduced the next iteration of the iBooks app, which for the first time will offer textbooks that start at $14.99 or less for high school students.…Read More

Tech-savvy university grows mobile learning with $1.8M award

ACU gave iPods and iPhones to about 1,000 incoming students in 2008.
ACU gave iPods and iPhones to about 1,000 incoming students in 2008.

Abilene Christian University, among the leading users of mobile technology in higher education, will use a $1.8 million award from AT&T to build a studio for mobile learning experimentation and a K-12 professional development program that will train teachers to use education technology devices such as eReaders and internet-ready phones.

This isn’t the first time AT&T has partnered with ACU, a campus of almost 5,000 students in Abilene, Texas. The phone giant and Alcatel-Lucent helped develop the university’s Wi-Fi internet network earlier this decade. AT&T also gave $1 million to ACU in 2007 for the computer infrastructure in the school’s Bob and Shirley Hunter Welcome Center.

The wireless network powers the thousands of mobile devices—mostly Apple iPods and iPhones—that ACU has doled out to incoming students in recent years. The school pays for the mobile hardware, while students pay for the monthly AT&T service plan, according to ACU officials.…Read More

College newspaper warms up its digital iPad press

The student newspaper at Abilene Christian University (ACU) isn’t waiting for iPads to hit the shelves before seizing on the opportunity the device holds for print publications, reports MacNewsWorld:  Instead, the Optimist has developed its own app for the new platform. “We can’t wait until [the iPad] is adopted by a critical mass of people,” Professor Kenneth Pybus said. “We want to be up and running and there when they’re ready for us.” ACU will be among the first colleges to offer editions of its student newspaper designed specifically for the new hardware platform. Adding an iPad edition of the newspaper was a natural move for the publication. It’s already offered in print, on the web, and on the iPhone and iPod Touch, which are issued to students at ACU the way laptops are allocated at other universities. “Making our students comfortable with mobile news delivery just makes good sense academically,” Journalism Department Chair Cheryl Bacon said. “They’re going to be going into work environments where they have to adapt very quickly to technological change, and they have to understand how mobile delivery differs from other types of news delivery.”

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Students use iPods, iPhones to grade Obama’s address

Abilene Christian students answered about 50 questions on their iPhones and iPods during President Obama's address.
Abilene Christian students answered 50 questions on their iPhones and iPods during Obama's address.

It’s the stuff that makes political pollsters salivate: 30 Abilene Christian University students used iPhones and iPod Touches to respond to President Obama’s Jan. 27 State of the Union address in real time, and a campus technology official said the exercise offered insight into boosting student participation in class.

Abilene Christian was among the country’s first campuses to bring iPhones to students when the school gave the devices to incoming freshmen last school year. Freshmen and sophomores now have university-issued iPhones or iPod Touches, and professors from the political science and journalism programs assembled 30 students to gauge reaction during Obama’s first State of the Union speech.

“It was a helpful exercise because … we were able to see if an interactive environment helped students engage in politics differently,” said Dennis Marquardt, Abilene Christian’s educational technology manager, who helped oversee the project. “It helped us understand where students were coming from a little bit more.”…Read More