All Posts Tagged With: "iPhone"
Want free pizza? Hazy about last night? Try these apps.
Scott Dobson-Mitchell reviews five apps for students
Photo courtesy of Alla_G on Flickr
1) FoodBot [mobile site]
Nevermind medical diagnoses or space exploration. Artificial intelligence has found a more important calling — locating free food on campus! FoodBot combs the web for events where free food has been advertised, such as fundraisers, job fairs and council meetings. It puts them on a calendar that details quality, quantity, time commitment, and — importantly — awkwardness. Too bad it’s only available at a few schools so far.
Continue reading Want free pizza? Hazy about last night? Try these apps.
On Campus grades six university apps
One school gets an A-grade. Another failed the assignment.
Photo courtesy of UBC Alumni and University Relations
Universities in Canada are rushing to get their apps onto your phones and tablets. When done right, those apps can help potential students see into the soul of a campus. Even better, they can help current students find their way to lunch, to class and to enriching events. But when done poorly, apps can make a school look out totally of touch with technology. The lesson? Don’t rush your app schools. Here’s what we think of six Canadian universities’ apps for iPhone.
University of British Columbia — Grade: A
If every school made an app this good, then there would be no more paper brochures arriving in the mailbox, no one will ever get lost on campus, and no student would ever have an excuse to say that they’re bored.
Apple America
Why Canada’s learning technology experts say tech handouts are lackluster
When they enter university, freshman are often told that with all the social and educational opportunities before them, the world is at their fingertips. But, while online educational resources have given new understanding to that phrase, just within the past year it takes on an even more literal meaning.
At Seton Hill, a Catholic liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, the new catchphrase is “An iPad for everyone.” On March 30, the school made headlines as the first in North America to announce it would put the latest Apple touch technology in the hands of its new recruits—at no cost to them. “The iPad will lighten the backpacks of Seton Hill University students,” said president JoAnne Boyle in a release from the school. The school hopes Apple’s iBook application will allow students to ditch the heavy textbooks they lug around, and even make carrying a pen and paper unnecessary.
The initiative is part of the Griffin (the school’s mascot) Technology Advantage the school promotes to entice students. Not only will freshman receive an iPad for the first time this fall, but the school is also handing out brand new 13” Macbooks as part of the all-encompassing technology program, which upper-year students can opt in to for $500 a semester.
And while Seton Hill is the first American institution to announce it would gift iPads this fall, it isn’t the first American institution to offer Apple handouts to new students. In 2008, Abilene Christian University, in Abilene Texas, began offering iPhones or iPod Touch devices to its incoming freshman, citing at the time students’ ability to use them for “homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors’ offices, and check their meal and account balances.”
George Fox University in Oregon also announced it will give first-year students the choice of scoring a new iPad instead of the MacBook the school normally gives out. The price is offset in tuition, but students get to keep their new device when they graduate.
Though it may just be the latest incentive to drive recruitment at some U.S. schools, Canadian students may be feeling left in the digital dark age. With the buzz created over the possibilities of the iPad in academia, the question is whether it will prove to be a valuable education tool. And is the attention the new device is getting south of the border a sign Canadian schools are falling behind in learning technology innovation?
The answer, simply, is ‘No,’ said Ken Coates, dean of the faculty of arts at the University of Waterloo. Coates recently chaired the learning stream of the Canada 3.0 conference on digital media, held in Stratford, Ont.—the birthing grounds of Waterloo’s newest satellite campus designed to house niche programs in digital media and global business. He said even though the traditional approach to education is still a recent memory in the minds of most Canadians, the country isn’t lagging in a race towards digital academic innovation.
“I think we’re pretty much on the curb with other countries,” Coates said. “It’s a hundred yard race, and now we have one foot out of the starting block.” Coates said while there is no doubt students would be happy with the latest Apple technology, the nature of the Canadian university system functions much differently than the for-profit attitudes of some American schools. In fact, he said, the idea of handing out the latest in technology is not a new concept, even to Canadians.
At Acadia University in Nova Scotia, the technology advantage program saw the incorporated use of notebook computers loaned out by the school as part a blended learning approach more than a decade ago.
But, Coates said, the focus for Canada and the 3.0 conference was to take the thousands of projects happening in the country today and collaborate on how to move forward to meet student demands for digital, accessible and virtual learning. “Our country needs to make a huge move into this space if we’re going to be competitive in the 21st century,” he said. But, he said in the process of giving students the learning opportunities they want, the real concern becomes: “Can we ensure that the learning occurs with the level and with the intensity that we expect?”
While university is supposed to encompass a certain aspect of experimentation, the real purpose of higher learning is to be intellectually challenging, Coates said. “Technology lets you do that, but the idea of post-secondary education is that you don’t just turn students over, but you guide them.” And while the iPad is nice piece of hardware, Coates said what’s important to remember when moving learning-specific technology forward is that every program and course can’t be fulfilled by one blanket solution. What might work for teaching an English class won’t suffice for a chemistry lab, Coates said.
The SketchBook Pro app on the iPad may be an advantage for design and arts students, but for chemistry students, beyond displaying the periodic table and other reference matierials, it isn’t an asset for lab work.
Program-specific tech may be the way forward for Canada’s innovators, but Blackboard Inc. mobile developer Aaron Wasserman said offering students the flexibility of having learning materials wherever they are is a growing expectation of today’s student, American or Canadian. “It’s very natural that they would expect to be able to get academic information . . . on-the-go,” Wasserman said. “That is a commonality.”
Still a student at Stanford University, Wasserman developed an iPhone application called iStanford, which provided his peers with at-hand course material, as well as content on school life, such as transit schedules and the latest in campus news. When Blackboard, who specializes in learning management systems in North America acquired Wasserman’s design and expertise, they turned the iStanford model into Mobile Central, so the technology could be retrofitted to schools who sought the system for their students.
But Brian Lamb, manager of emerging technologies and digital content at the University of British Columbia, said while handout technology and mobile apps are impressive, most don’t serve to improve student learning. “They seemed to be geared towards recruitment and student life as opposed to enhancing learning and education,” Lamb said. “They’re shiny and they’re fun to use . . . but I do worry a little bit that we might be reinforcing a new kind of Internet,” Lamb said.
He said in a way, incorporating and investing closed-content devices like the iPad into higher education would not only be a waste of public resources, but would take a step back from open education and nationwide collaboration the federal government promoted and funded in the early 2000s. “When I entered this field in 2002, there really was something like national strategy happening in online learning,” Lamb said. “It would be nice to see something like that again.”
Lamb said these collaborations lost momentum with the Paul Martin administration. After his term in office, in 2006 and 2007, Industry Canada released two strategies—Advantage Canada and Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage—to enhance science and technology infrastructure and innovation and included a focus on advancing learning in universities.
Industry Minister Tony Clement was a keynote speaker at the Canada 3.0 conference. In his address he announced the country’s newest Digitial Economy strategy, which puts an emphasis on digital technologies. “I don’t need to remind this audience how important these new tools can be—to propelling our economic growth and enhancing our quality of life,” Clement said during his speech at the conference. “Already, these technologies are transforming the way we communicate, run our businesses, conduct commerce. They’re revolutionizing how medical professionals keep us healthy, how research is done and how students learn.”
As far as the gap in technology between Canada and the U.S., Lamb said from his experience at conferences in emerging technology, Canadian institutions usually have a strong innovative presence. “I think Canada stacks up reasonably well,” he said. In some ways, thanks to the smaller number of institutions, Lamb said Canada has greater possibilities to collaborate on best practices in learning technology and learn from one another, an advantage the U.S. doesn’t have. “We can actually know who all each other are,” Lamb said. “And that’s impossible in the United States.”
University students turning to downloadable textbooks
Some students are saving money (and their backs) with e-texts
Like most university students heading back to school, Kerry Alvarez is preparing to make her annual donation to the campus book store.
The third-year sociology student at Hamilton’s McMaster University says she expects to shell out more than $400 on textbooks this semester alone.
“I don’t really like it,” said Alvarez, 23. “Money is really tight, especially with the economy and all.”
It’s perhaps no surprise that the dwindling bank accounts of students like Alvarez, coupled with the popularity of technology like Apple’s iPhone, has led to the emergence of a cheap alternative to the bulky tomes of days past: downloadable digital textbooks.
Download one from CourseSmart LLC, an online marketplace for digital textbooks, and you’ll gain access to a document that’s got all the charts, tables, and graphics as a physical book – for about half the price, according to the company.
The National Association of College Stores – a U.S. group that also represents 72 Canadian stores – predicts that digital textbooks, while currently representing only a tiny portion of the market, could account for 15 per cent of all university textbook sales by 2011-12.
In 2007, Montreal’s Concordia University became the first post-secondary institution in Canada to offer e-textbooks, as they’re also known, in its bookstores.
“I think it’s a very good trend,” said Colleen O’Neill, executive director of the Canadian Publishers’ Council’s higher education and trade division.
E-textbooks have been available in Canada for four or five years, mostly through pilot projects, said O’Neill. Their overall market share is currently about five to eight per cent, she said.
While there’s a good deal of optimism about the shift to electronic learning – which O’Neill believes will also reduce the publishing industry’s environmental footprint – not everyone is ready to tear down their bookshelves.
U Saskatchewan in the lead? Check your iPhone
With new iUSASK app, students will have access to marks, maps and campus webcams
Programmers at the University of Saskatchewan have designed a new iPhone application that could revolutionize how some students get their school-related information.
The iUSASK app is set to launch in August, and will allow students to check their marks, feedback from professors, campus news, maps and even search the library catalogue.
Although the program, a first at a Canadian university, still needs to be approved by smart phone manufacturer Apple, the university is aiming to have it available — for free — by the time school starts in September.
USask’s computer science department will also be the first Canadian university to offer an iPhone programming course within the year. The class will be open to students and members of the public, who will learn how to build applications for the popular smart phone.
The iUSASK application, which can also be accessed on the iPod Touch, can currently be used to check class schedules, assignment due dates, marks and other academic notifications. The university’s athletics department has a feed, as does the students’ union and the school’s learning centre. The program even has access to a real-time campus webcam.
As they continue to develop the software, the app’s programmers plan on including a real-time map, made with Google Maps, that can track a user’s location at the university.
A spokesperson for the school recently told The StarPhoenix that the programming code used in the software could ostensibly be sold to other universities. “Yes, we could make money off of the application.”
