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"One iPhone per student - college toy?

The project is part of a Texas teaching experiment, at the  Abilene Christian University, where iPhones or iPod Touch devices are used as a sort of top-of-range e-book, reports John Cox.

He writes that the hardware:

"...is part of the Texas university's pilot mobile learning project, which has been gestating for over a year. About 650 first-year students chose the iPhone, and about 300 the iPod Touch ...both devices incorporate an 802.11g Wi-Fi adapter. ACU pays for the hardware, student (or their parents) select and pay for their monthly AT&T service plan."

The report makes it clear that this isn't an Apple-only deal:

 ACU created a bundle of Web-based mobile applications, rather than make use of Apple's software developers kit. That gives the school the option of making use of other devices in the future, possibly a touch-based Android phone, running a full mobile Web browser such as Firefox for Mobile, now in development. These new mobile applications, and others such as Google Apps for Education, a suite of e-mail and other cloud-based services, are all accessible as soon as users complete their login authentication. 

One group of ACU applications heavily used by Davis during her first week or so on campus is called mymobile "You click on the tab and it tells you the classes you're enrolled in, where they are, the professor's name, and [gives you] a 3-D map of the campus," she says. "That was really, really helpful to find your way around."

Read the full story at Network World