Apple has approved an application developed by Abilene Christian University that would allow students and staff to read ACU’s student newspaper, the Optimist, on the iPad device just released April 3, reports the Abilene Reporter-News. School officials say ACU is the nation’s first university to create an iPad application for this purpose. The Optimist already has an iPhone app, allowing iPhone and iPod Touch users to view the student newspaper in a three-dimensional digital form. ACU faculty worked with student computer programmers and student newspaper staff to develop the app to coincide with the iPad launch date. ACU ordered about 20 iPads for faculty to research educational applications for the device. The school will have at least 60 iPads on campus for the fall 2010 semester, with eight dedicated to Optimist staff…
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College newspaper warms up its digital iPad press
The student newspaper at Abilene Christian University (ACU) isn’t waiting for iPads to hit the shelves before seizing on the opportunity the device holds for print publications, reports MacNewsWorld: Instead, the Optimist has developed its own app for the new platform. “We can’t wait until [the iPad] is adopted by a critical mass of people,” Professor Kenneth Pybus said. “We want to be up and running and there when they’re ready for us.” ACU will be among the first colleges to offer editions of its student newspaper designed specifically for the new hardware platform. Adding an iPad edition of the newspaper was a natural move for the publication. It’s already offered in print, on the web, and on the iPhone and iPod Touch, which are issued to students at ACU the way laptops are allocated at other universities. “Making our students comfortable with mobile news delivery just makes good sense academically,” Journalism Department Chair Cheryl Bacon said. “They’re going to be going into work environments where they have to adapt very quickly to technological change, and they have to understand how mobile delivery differs from other types of news delivery.”
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