Category: Gadgets
September 20, 2010, 05:52 PM ET
Classroom iPad Programs Get Mixed Response
A few weeks after a handful of colleges gave away iPads to determine the tablet's place in the classroom, students and faculty seem confident that the device has some future in academe.
But they're still not exactly sure where that might be.
At those early-adopter schools, iPads are competing with MacBooks as the students' go-to gadget for note taking and Web surfing. Zach Kramberg, a first-year student at George Fox University, which allowed incoming students to choose between a complimentary iPad or MacBook this fall, said the tablet has become an important tool for recording and organizing lecture notes. He also takes the device with him to the university's dimly lit chapel so he can follow along with an app called iBible. "The iPad's very easy to use once you figure them out," he said.
Still, Mr. Kramberg said the majority of students rely on bound Bibles in chapel and stick to...
Read MoreJune 29, 2010, 05:40 PM ET
Inaccessible E-Readers May Run Afoul of the Law, Feds Warn Colleges
Feds to colleges: If you require students to use electronic-book readers that blind people can't access, you may be running afoul of the law.
That was the message of a letter released to college presidents Tuesday by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice.
"It is unacceptable for universities to use emerging technology without insisting that this technology be accessible to all students," the letter warns.
The move comes after two national organizations representing the blind sued Arizona State University over its use of the Kindle. The groups had also asked the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to investigate whether e-book practices at several universities violated the rights of blind students under the Americans With Disabilities Act. In January, a series of agreements were announced in which universities pledged not to use Amazon's Kindle or any similar devices...
Read MoreJune 17, 2010, 04:44 PM ET
Student Smartphone Use Doubles; Instant Messaging Loses Favor
Smartphone use among college students has almost doubled since early last year, a study by a researcher at Ball State University found.
The study confirms what has become common knowledge: cellphones are almost ubiquitous on college campuses, with 99.8 percent of students owning one or more. But in the national survey of about 500 students—which has been conducted twice a year since 2005—new details emerged on the kind of phones they own and how they use them.
Of those phone-owning students, 49 percent now have smartphones, compared with 38 percent last October and 27 percent in February 2009.
Text messaging has overtaken not just e-mail but also instant messaging in popularity. Ninety-seven percent of students use text messages as their main form of communication, as opposed to 30 percent for e-mail and 25 percent for instant messaging.
Approximately 90 percent of smartphone owners...
Read MoreMay 24, 2010, 05:15 PM ET
Google Launches New Course-Scheduling System
Last week was a big one for Google fans in higher education. Google Wave opened its doors, and Google Voice now lets students get calls forwarded from their old numbers to their new phones.
Google made one more announcement last week—about a new course-scheduling system, CloudCourse—that could potentially have implications for higher education. CloudCourse is integrated with Google Calendar and allows users to schedule classes, look up user profiles, and sync the service's data with internal university systems. CloudCourse was built entirely on Google's App Engine, which allows users to build and host Web apps. Google hopes that CloudCourse can serve as an example of how to use the App Engine.
One potential use for CloudCourse is to manage class rosters with tools that allow users to look at enrolled versus waitlisted students, mark student attendance, and change a student's...
Read MoreMay 14, 2010, 02:00 PM ET
Google Gives Students a Portable Voice
"We've heard," says Google's official blog today, that "college students, in particular, really appreciate getting their voice mail sent to their e-mail, sending free text messages, and reading voice-mail transcriptions, rather than listening to messages (especially handy while in class)."
And not-so-coincidentally, Google has a service that does just that. Google Voice for Students gives a person all this for nothing—as long as that person has an e-mail address that ends in ".edu." The rest of us, well, just have to know someone well-connected to get an invite.
Actually, it's a nice service. You get a new phone number, and can forward all your other phones to that, and get all your mail in one place. And once you stop being amused by the way the transcription feature sometimes turns your friends' words into things they didn't really say, you will find it to be useful. Maybe on your...
Read MoreMay 12, 2010, 03:40 PM ET
App From San Diego State U. to Map Oil Spill on Coast
An ordinary person can't do much to help with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but for an ordinary person with a smartphone, it's a different story.
The Visualization Center at San Diego State University and Crisis Commons, an online community that uses technology to respond to crises, will release a free smartphone application in the next few days that people can use to document the oil spill's effects on the coastline. When users take pictures of the coast with the new application, Slick View, the photo will be sent back to San Diego with a time stamp and a GPS location attached. The center will process all the images and piece maps together of the coast along the Gulf of Mexico. The maps, which will be available to the public, will show the changes along the coast over time.
“If you took tens of thousands of pictures, especially if you took them all at once, you would have an...
Read MoreApril 29, 2010, 04:10 PM ET
If Libraries Remove Computers, Will Anyone Come?
If iPads and other new mobile computers catch on, libraries might not need to offer rooms full of computers for students to do their research, writing, and Facebooking. But if that happens, will students have any reason left to visit the library?
That's the provocative question posed by Brian Mathews, assistant university librarian at the University of California at Santa Barbara, on his blog this week.
The trend in the last few years was to add more computers to the library, creating spaces often called "information commons." And during that time, visits to the library have increased greatly. "I think the key to our current success has been the computers," Mr. Mathews says on his blog.
But now Mr. Mathews says he hears colleagues planning to remove desktops and trying programs to loan out iPads or netbooks to students who want to use a computer while in the library. "So the real...
Read MoreMarch 30, 2010, 03:50 PM ET
Seton Hill to Offer iPads to Full-Time Students
Seton Hill University, a liberal-arts institution in Pennsylvania with more than 2,100 students, announced a program on Tuesday that offers an iPad to every full-time student.
Distribution will begin in the fall. Incoming freshmen will also receive a 13-inch MacBook laptop, which Seton Hill will replaced after two years; current sophomores, juniors, and seniors can opt into that program.
The iPad distribution marks the beginning of the university's Griffin Technology Advantage program, which will also include a completely wireless campus, quadrupled bandwith, and faculty training in advanced technologies. Students will be charged an additional $500 per semester in fees for the new technology program, and the university says it has absorbed the cost of the iPads.
"The iPad will lighten the backpacks of Seton Hill University students," said JoAnne W. Boyle, president of Seton Hill...
Read MoreMarch 11, 2010, 10:00 AM ET
Georgia Tech Students Develop Digital Locks for Shared Bikes
Students in Emory University's bike-sharing program will soon be able to unlock the bikes they want to use by sending a text message. The university will replace its current system, which requires manually checking out a key, with the automatic one, developed by students at the nearby Georgia Institute of Technology.
Each bike in the new "viaCycle" fleet will be equipped with a GPS and locking system. When students or employees want to use a bike, they will send a text message with the bike's identification number to a server. The server will forward the request to the bike and unlock it automatically. After using the bike, the rider will use an attached cable to secure it anywhere and send another text message to lock it.
Five graduate students and one alumni of Georgia Tech's mechanical-engineering program won a $50,000 grant from the Ford Motor Company Fund to create the lock system...
Read MoreMarch 2, 2010, 11:00 AM ET
Northeastern U. Students Wire Pitchers' Shirts to Help Prevent Sports Injuries
Three Northeastern University mechanical-engineering students have designed a data-gathering shirt that could reduce fatigue-related injuries among pitchers in baseball. For their senior project, Marcus Moche, Alexandra Morgan, and David Schmidt wired an Under Armour-brand shirt to graph the mechanics of a pitch. They tested their product on two pitchers from Northeastern's club team.
The students sewed accelerometers onto the forearm, upper arm, and back of the shirt with conductive thread. The wiring gathers at the small of the back and connects to a data-acquisition machine, which converts the signals into number values. Every pitch yields a graph that shows the speed and displacement of three body parts where the accelerometers are attached.
In testing, each pitcher's graph was distinct. One pitcher's fastball was different from the other's, and both pitchers' curveballs looked...
Read More
Each day on Wired Campus, The Chronicle's technology reporters highlight key IT developments and put them in perspective.