How do you educate a generation of students eternally distracted by
the internet, cellphones and video games? Easy. You enable them by
handing out free iPhones — and then integrating the gadget into your
curriculum.
That’s the idea Abilene Christian University has to refresh
classroom learning. Located in Texas, the private university just
finished its first year of a pilot program, in which 1,000 freshman students had the choice between a free iPhone or an iPod Touch.
The initiative’s goal was to explore how the always-connected iPhone
might revolutionize the classroom experience with a dash of digital
interactivity. Think web apps to turn in homework, look up campus maps,
watch lecture podcasts and check class schedules and grades. For
classroom participation, there’s even polling software for Abilene
students to digitally raise their hand.
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The verdict? It’s working quite well. 2,100 Abilene students, or 48
percent of the population, are now equipped with a free iPhone. Fully
97 percent of the faculty population has iPhones, too. The iPhone is
aiding Abilene in giving students the information they need — when they
want it, wherever they want it, said Bill Rankin, a professor of
medieval studies who helped plan the initiative. . . .
The traditional classroom, where an instructor assigns a textbook, is
heading toward obsolescence. Why listen to a single source talk about a
printed textbook that will inevitably be outdated in a few years? That
setting seems stale and hopelessly limited when pitted against the
internet, which opens a portal to a live stream of information provided
by billions of minds. . . .
These are the specific educational problems Abilene is targeting
with the iPhone. Instead of standing in front of a classroom and
talking for an hour, Rankin instructs his students to use their iPhones
to look up relevant information on the fly. Then, the students can
discuss the information they’ve found, and Rankin leads the dialogue by
helping assess which sources are accurate and useful.
It’s like a mashup of a 1960s teach-in with smartphone technology from the 2000s.
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