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Mobility
11/29/2005
Browsing the Web or instant messaging a friend during a lecture can be a common occurrence; taking notes can become secondary to instant entertainment. At that point, allowing laptops in class for note-taking may not be the best answer to meeting students' needs for technology. It is important to recognize that technology in general (and computing in particular) has a sociopersonal element that students easily integrate into their lives." Read the articleStanford & iTunes
As covered in the October 26, 2005 edition of CT's C2 online newsletter, Stanford University (CA) students, university alumni (and the general public) can now stay connected with university resources and information via Stanford on iTunes. Several types of content will be provided: faculty lectures, information about campus events and performances, music offerings from the Stanford community, and podcasts covering Stanford football. Howard Wolf, vice president for Alumni Affairs and president of the Stanford Alumni Association, comments to the Stanford Report: "Stanford has been fortunate to partner with Apple in a project that allows us to share the intellectual and cultural life of the university with our alumni." The system will allow restricted access to course-related content as well as free public access to non-students and faculty, where appropriate. According to CNET, the technology review Web site, faculty, students, and over 180,000 Stanford alumns have access to inexpensive digital content. Stanford's alumni relations officer David Vargas remarked, "that number will grow exponentially over time and will soon include video content as well."
Mobile technology in the background
During a Syllabus2004 panel discussion, William Griswold, a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California-San Diego, commented that the university has deployed over a thousand 802.11b points on the campus. UCSD also received a gift from HP of several hundred wireless PDAs, 350 of which were distributed across three different classes, so that students could fully incorporate the devices in and out of the classroom. In addition, Griswold and his students introduced an application called ActiveClass— software designed for in class communications— in the lecture setting. "Students could ask questions via their wireless PDA, professors could post polls, and students could give feedback to the professor," said Griswold. "The idea was that there could be a silent and anonymous aggregated conversation; a kind of back channel— an aggregated broadcast channel, not a one-to-one instant messaging channel." Griswold also mentioned that the end result allowed students to come out of their shells: They participate more and there's a more diverse mix of questions. Read the article
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