Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Year of the smart phone on college campuses?

A market analysis describes the Android as a "wild card" among smart-phone systems.
A market analysis describes the Android as a "wild card" among smart-phone systems.

An international market research firm predicts a 55-percent jump in smart-phone sales this year—a projection that could lead to an unprecedented increase in internet-enabled phone use during colleges’ 2010-11 academic year.

The mobile device market analysis, released Sept. 7 by International Data Corp. (IDC), is welcome news to researchers who have predicted a jump in smart-phone use for educational purposes, because college-aged men and women are among the likeliest to use the technology.

There will be about 270 million smart phones—such as the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry—shipped during 2010, a major jump from the 173 million sold in 2009, according to IDC’s projections.…Read More

iPhone 4 Wi-Fi proves a challenge for one university

The iPhone 4 is the first to support 802.11n, which offers the highest Wi-Fi data rates and throughput. But it runs only on the crowded 2.4GHz band, and at one university, which is deploying hundreds of the new devices, that poses some big Wi-Fi challenges for IT, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The iPhone deployment at Abilene Christian University, in Abilene, Texas, is unusual, possibly unique: There can be up to 500 or more iPhone 4 handsets in a big lecture hall, all trying to connect to the hall’s collection of wireless access points. It’s especially frustrating because ACU’s IT group had successfully deployed hundreds of 11g iPhones, in the same lecture hall, on the same 2.4GHz band with minimal problems. For now, in the areas with 802.11n access points, 11n has in effect been turned off, and the new iPhone 4s will run as 11g clients, at least for a few weeks until the kinks get worked out. At this point, it’s not clear if the WLAN instability is an issue of configuring the access points; the mix of 11g and 11n clients, which triggers 802.11 protection mechanisms adding overhead; the limited channel assignments; a possible iPhone 4 Wi-Fi bug; or some combination of these…

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iPhone 4 contains a design flaw, testers say

Consumer Reports, America’s trusted source of product reviews, said it would not recommend the iPhone 4 because of a hardware flaw with its antenna that sometimes resulted in dropped calls, reports the New York Times. The independent consumer magazine also cast doubt on Apple’s recent explanation that a software bug had caused the widely reported problem. Apple did not return requests for comment. Consumer Reports did not slap the iPhone 4 with a “don’t buy” warning, which it sometimes issues for shoddy or unsafe products. But it said that because of the design flaw, it would not recommend it as it did the previous version of the iPhone, the 3GS. The next question is, Will any of Apple’s customers even care? The various versions of the iPhone have been panned a number of times for myriad problems, real or perceived: slow network, cracked screens, dropped calls, and no support for the popular web video format Flash. But iPhone sales have surpassed even the most optimistic forecasts and helped make Apple the most valuable company in the technology industry. And despite early reports of problems with the iPhone 4 antenna, Apple sold 1.7 million units in just three days, making it the best-selling new technology gadget in Apple’s history. Still, analysts say Apple eventually could suffer from the bad publicity it had received over the antenna problems and for its seemingly contradictory responses…

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On new iPhone, a mystery of dropped calls

Apple’s touch-screen smart phone has been a sensation since Day 1 three years ago, and many who own the device believe it to be almost perfect—if only it worked better as a phone. That might be the case with the new iPhone 4 as well, reports the New York Times. What surprised many of the new phone’s earliest adopters as they tested the phone after its June 24 launch: The precious little bars that signal network connections inexplicably disappeared when they cradled the phone in their hands a particular way. Sometimes, but not always, the cradling resulted in dropped calls. In the hours before Apple weighed in on the problem, iPhone fans turned to one another on the internet in a zealous exercise in crowd-sourcing for answers to the mystery. They were all the more baffled because the iPhone 4 was designed to have better reception. A metal band that wraps around the edges of the device is supposed to pull in a stronger signal; software is supposed to choose the section of the signal with the least congestion. Late on June 24, an Apple spokesman, Steve Dowling, acknowledged that the issues experienced by users were real but played down their importance. “Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, depending on the placement of the antennas,” he said. “This is a fact of life for every wireless phone.”

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New smart phones pave the way for mobile video chats

Apple's latest iPhone has many implications for education.
Apple's latest iPhone has many implications for education.

Apple’s iPhone 4, unveiled June 7 and set for release June 24, features a mobile video conferencing application that could increase collaboration among students at different locations and make cross-district and on-the-go meetings easier for school officials.

Video conferencing is possible with the addition of a second camera on the front of the new iPhone, in addition to a five-megapixel camera and a flash on the back. For now, the video conferencing function, FaceTime, works only if both parties to the call have an iPhone 4 and are connected over a Wi-Fi network rather than a cell phone network.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs indicated that FaceTime eventually will work over cellular networks, saying Apple needs to “work a little bit” with wireless providers to make it “ready for the future.”…Read More