Student Loan Blog : iPhone

Cutting-Edge Colleges Deliver Courses Via Cell Phones

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:48:00 GMT

In order to reach a more diverse population of learners, several institutions are offering full college course content delivered via a user’s cell phone, reports UniversityBusiness.com (“Cellular Colleges: The Next Small Thing,” February 2009).

“Cellular” courses will be similar to their online counterparts and will include access to self-paced tutorials and student chat rooms, as well as to several other features, educators say.

Mobile education courses are already available at Fukuoka (Kyodo) Cyber University, Japan’s first Internet-based university, which specializes in delivering course content using SoftBank 3G smart phones. The university, which opened in 2007, entices new students to enroll by offering a student’s first course free of charge as long as students use the school’s provider, and pay for all equipment and transmission fees.

Colleges and universities in the United States have also recently begun experimenting with video instruction over personal mobile devices, including Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, which is considering mobile education as part of the school’s new emerging media initiative.

The Louisiana Community & Technical College System is also considering offering several different online courses that could be delivered to students on their iPhone, Google Phone, Blackberry or other mobile devices as a means of expanding students’ access to higher education throughout the state.

“The top barriers in attaining their degrees are geographic access, cost of higher education and scheduling conflicts,” said school system president Joe May. “We are excited to be able to bring a greater level of access to potential students.”

The school system has teamed with AT&T, eCollege and Pearson Custom Solutions to ensure that courses will be optimized for online and mobile delivery and that courses remain compatible with new mobile services and features as they become available.

“This partnership completely changes the future of how online learning is delivered,” said Don Kilburn, CEO of Pearson Custom Solutions. “We don’t just live in an online environment — we live in a mobile environment. This partnership gives working adults in Louisiana the most flexible and reliable working option available- whether it’s on a desktop, laptop, or mobile device.”

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Laptop Bans by College Professors May Improve Class Discussions

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:39:00 GMT

Some professors at the nation’s most prominent law schools are resorting to classroom laptop bans to help reengage law students in lectures and discussions, and, despite students’ claims that the anti-laptop policies deny them a proper education, professors are seeing positive results, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Law Professors Rule Laptops Out of Order in Class,” June 13, 2008).

Don Herzog, University of Michigan Law School professor, conducted a one-day laptop ban as an experiment.

“Not only was I stunned by how much better the class was, the students volunteered that it was much better,” he said. Herzog will make the ban permanent when he begins teaching again this fall after completing his sabbatical.

In addition to Herzog, law professors at Florida International University, the University of Wisconsin, Georgetown, and Harvard, have enacted laptop-ban policies for their classroom lectures.

David Cole, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, stopped allowing his students to bring laptops to class two years go. A survey of Cole’s students conducted last year regarding his “no laptop” policy found that approximately 75 percent of his students favored the laptop ban and 95 percent admitted to using the internet to engage in activities not related to the class lecture.

“If half the people [in class] are checked out, then the conversation just isn’t going to be as rich,” Cole said.

Not All Educators Agree with Anti-Laptop Policies

Ann Althouse, University of Wisconsin Law School professor, says that there will always be distracted students with or without the internet. Before the web, she says, students doodled, fidgeted, or stared absentmindedly out the window.

“The idea that we're going to somehow save these students from being distracted is a bit absurd,” Althouse told the Chronicle.

With the proliferation of iPhones, Blackberrys, and other PDAs, it may soon be difficult to regulate who’s surfing the Web, says Harvard Business School professor John Deighton.

“Ultimately the only way to ensure that a class member is not on the Web,” he says, “is to conduct an engaging class.”

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Huge iPhone Bills May Be Measured in Pounds, Not Pages

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 03:28:00 GMT

The IRS Tax Code: 16,845 pages

The Bible: around 1,291 pages

Your first iPhone bill: 600 pages

At least, that’s the current record. An iPhone bill consisting of 300 double-sided printed pages arrived in Pittsburgh earlier this week.

Think it’s a joke? We have video proof.

Finishing Off the Rainforest, One iPhone at a Time

When describing iPhone bills at his company, Ben Kuchera says, on the Ars Technica blog,

[W]hile the iPhone may be master of the digital mobile experience (for now), … AT&T’s iPhone bills are quite impressive in their own right. We’re starting to get bills for the iPhone here at Ars, and while many of us have had smartphones for some time, we’ve never seen a bill like this. (“iPhone bill is surprisingly Xbox HUGE (lol),” Aug. 11, 2007)

The mind-boggling size of these bills has struck so many people as overkill that USA Today has picked up the story and Charlie Gibson of ABC News will even be airing a piece on it tonight.

And in This Corner, the Heavyweight Champ …

Kuchera claims that one of the iPhone bills received at Ars Technica is “a whopping 52 pages long,” while his own personal bill is 34 pages (and that’s double-sided).

Gibson’s ABC news story will highlight examples of similarly unbelievable bills received by New York City residents.

So far, the prize for the most voluminous bill goes to Justine Ezarik, a graphic designer and “active Internet blogger” from Pittsburgh whose first bill, according to Jefferson Graham of USA Today, was so large it arrived in a box (“How Many Trees Did Your iPhone Bill Kill?,” Aug. 14, 2007).

It was an incredible 300 pages.

“This is so silly,” Ezarik is quoted as saying. “There’s no reason they need to send you this much information.”

Ezarik’s YouTube video of her current record-holding iPhone bill has already received well over 20,000 views.

The Story of Your iPhone in 600 Pages: Unabridged and Just Not That Interesting

What iPhone users are getting is essentially a mountain of pages of useless details, itemizing—without actually sourcing—every bit of data downloaded, every single text message sent or received, and basically every kilobyte of information their iPhone has ever come into contact with.

Many customers are describing this nondescriptive tracking of information minutiae as not only a waste of paper (since there’s no charge associated with most of the itemizations), but highly annoying.

Rod Enderle, a consultant with the Enderle Group, characterizes the “finely detailed bills” as “stupid,” Graham writes. “Not only does it cost AT&T more to do this, it just upsets customers. It’s bad business,” Enderle says.

iPhone users can end the paper parade by requesting summary bills or by switching to online billing. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel claims that sending boxes of bills to customers is not a widespread practice.

“We don’t want to presume for the customer that they want detail or don’t want detail. That needs to be up to them,” he says in Graham’s article.

So when you get your next iPhone bill and it’s three or more pounds of basically wanton data of questionable value in a big, not-so-beautiful box, don’t claim you never saw it coming.

For all the information you need about student loans, go to www.nextstudent.com.

Student Loan Girl

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The Ford Sync: On the Road and Taking Your Digital Life With You

Student Loan Girl — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 23:19:00 GMT

College students everywhere were dying of anticipation about a month ago, waiting to get their hands on one of Apple’s new iPhones, hailed by some as the new messiah of mobile media. Released last month, it was one of the most hyped products in years, with ads plastered all over the Internet, television and pretty much anywhere else you looked. (See our iPhone review here.)

But at $499–$599, the iPhone’s price tag may be a little steep for you if you’re the average college student. Especially if you were looking to drop almost $1,000 on a new computer for school in the fall.

For those of you who can’t quite bring yourselves to cough up the $500 Apple’s asking, there’s now a cheaper alternative to the iPhone.

Well, sort of. And there’s a catch.

Cheaper Than an iPhone?

The Ford Sync, being debuted this fall as the premier “in-vehicle integration system,” allows you to connect your cell phone with your MP3 player and other digital devices in one simple, easy-to-manage unit.

The Sync will only run you about $395, which is $200 cheaper than the higher-end iPhone.

The catch? You’ve got to buy a car to get it.

Now, if you’re in the market for new wheels at the same time you happen to be dying for a gadget as cool as the iPhone, you’re in luck. Just buy one of the 12 “high series” Ford or Lincoln-Mercury models that come equipped with the Sync. Or if you’re getting a lower end model, add the Sync as an option for $395 .

Although only available on 12 models this fall, over the next couple of years, according to an article that appeared on Jalopnik.com, the Sync will become standard on all Ford and Lincoln-Mercury models (“Ford Offers Sync System for $395,” Aug. 9, 2007).

The Sync vs. the iPhone

In all fairness, the Apple iPhone and Ford Sync aren’t really head-to-head competitors, although they have a lot in common. The iPhone, a do-everything mobile-media device of extraordinary design, integrates Web browsing, e-mail, a PDA and an iPod into a cell phone.

The Sync, on the other hand, isn’t an on-the-go media device but an “in-car communications and entertainment system” meant to network all those on-the-go media devices. The Sync allows you to combine your MP3 player, your Bluetooth-compatible cell phone, and any other media devices into a single rolling mobile communications center for your car.

Go Hands-Free With Voice Recognition

What’s really cool about the Sync? Its voice recognition feature lets you choose the songs or playlists you want to listen to just by naming them. No more risking your life and everyone else’s on the road because you’re fiddling with buttons, dials or click-wheels.

The Entertainment and Communications Headquarters That Rolls With You

Ford developed the Sync in an attempt to appeal to the MP3 generation that’s increasingly demanding more and more ways to stay plugged in wherever they are, whenever it is.

Ford’s research, according to the Jalopnik piece, found that more than 70 percent of those looking to buy new cars want to be able to use their digital media players in their vehicles.

And in that group of people so prized by marketing execs, consumers aged 18 to 24, nearly 60 percent own at least one digital media player, which most of them will be wanting to hook up when they’re out looking for their new car.

“Drivers want a simple solution to stay connected to the information, entertainment and people most important to them while on the road,” says Velle Kolde, product manager of Microsoft’s Automotive Business Unit, as quoted by Jalopnik. “Ford Sync, based on the Microsoft Auto software platform, is an updatable, smart and convenient solution for connecting your car with your life.”

Whatever your hang-up, whether you go into a state of paralysis without your cell phone, or you’re spinning ultimate MP3 mixes 24/7, or you’re a mobile media junkie who needs it all, the Ford Sync brings your digital world together. So you can stay connected and text, talk, DJ, e-mail or even work on your Lit 101 paper while you’re on a spur-of-the-moment weekend road trip or just trying to get through the traffic to get to class.

Now your only decision is which Ford car you’re going to buy.

Go to www.nextstudent.com for all your student loan needs.

Student Loan Girl

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New Apple iPhone: Huge Hype, Flawed Function

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 05:56:00 GMT

I remember when Krispy Kreme™ donuts and In and Out Burger™ first came to Phoenix, Ariz. It was like a feeding frenzy. The public was rabid with anticipation, salivating at the chance to get their hands on one of those “golden” donuts or mouth-watering hamburgers.

The message was clear: you’ve never had a donut (or hamburger) like this, and you’ve got to get one. NOW! Honestly, I never paid any attention to the ads. In fact, I just rolled my eyes and gave a sympathetic nod of my head whenever friends breached the subject.

It seems that a similar raucous has been created by the esteemed Apple iPhone, billed by some as the “Jesus-phone,” with its unbelievably hyped expectations, it seemed the second coming of mobile media devices. But has the device actually lived up to expectations? College students all around the country are dying to find out. (As if you don’t know already).

Sleek Looks Can’t Save iPhone

What? You consider yourself a savvy college student but you don’t actually own an iPhone? You’re not alone—and honestly—you’ll probably be glad that you didn’t buy an iPhone, priced at nearly $600, over a much-needed computer for the new school year.

People across the board are claiming that Apple’s new product is probably “the best iPod ever” according to PC Magazine (“Apple iPhone: Fun, Fabulous, Flawed,” June 30, 2007). In case you haven’t noticed, it’s supposed to be a phone. However, everyone I talk to (and the reviews back this up) say that it is absolutely the worst phone ever, even with the tons of innovations and some spectacular features.

Here’s the overall rundown from PC Mag:

BOTTOM LINE:

· It's the best portable media player ever.

· It's possibly the most fun we've ever had with a handheld device.

· It browses the Web like a champ.

· Yet as a voice phone and a messaging device, it's a loser.

· The iPhone is full of contradictions .

PROS:

· Fun new interface for navigating multimedia.

· Huge screen looks amazing.

· Terrific Web browser.

· Syncs well with PCs and Macs.

· YouTube function is great.

· Functions flow seamlessly into each other.

· Built-in speaker for voice calling and music.

CONS:

· Poor business e-mail and PIM connectivity.

· Bad audio quality on phone calls.

· Tons of "GSM buzz" on nearby speakers.

· Virtual keyboard hard to type on.

· No phone functionality with iPod speaker docks.

· No FM radio.

Version 1.0 a Big Disappointment?

Ok, the iPhone has some great elements, but it is version 1.0 after all. What do you expect? You never want to buy the first year’s model of a new car, so what were we thinking with the iPhone? There are some pretty fabulous features with the iPhone, but let’s face it. It really doesn’t live up to expectations (or at least all the hype) and it certainly isn’t what Steve Jobs (Apple founder/CEO) said it would be: "an incredibly great cell phone," "the best iPod we've ever made," and "the Internet in your pocket."

As PC Mag says, “One out of three isn't bad. Yes, the iPhone is the best iPod ever—ironic for something not even called an iPod! But it's just a plain lousy phone.” So, I guess we’ll have to wait until Apple gets it right and fixes the many shortcomings of the phone before we can say that the iPhone is the mobile media device of choice, at least for sophisticated college students.

For Full Reviews:

PC Magazine (shorter synopsis)

CNet (extensive review, user ratings and commentary)

Talk to the education finance advisors at NextStudent. They have all the information and advice you need on student loans. Check out www.nextstudent.com.

Be sure to tune in next Tuesday for my next blog about this week in student loans.

Student Loan Girl

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The iPhone vs. Duke University: iPhone 1, Duke 0

Student Loan Girl — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:03:00 GMT

Maybe the iPhones are jealous of the iPods. Maybe this is how Terminator 4 starts, in Durham, N.C., with a campus turf war between Apple handhelds. Duke University, the school that gave away iPods to its incoming freshman class of 2008 and that now sells iPods to any student that wants one for a bargain-busting $99 apiece, has recently seen its campus wireless routers afflicted with outages that may be due to what could essentially be described as an iPhone takeover.

According to an article by Jennifer Epstein that appeared in Inside Higher Ed, there have been at least nine incidents since last Friday where “as many as 30 of [the] university’s wireless routers have been knocked out of service for 10-minute intervals, after being flooded with as many as 18,000 requests per second that are believed to be coming from the iPhone’s built-in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi adapter” (“Is the iPhone Too Popular at Duke?,” July 18, 2007).

Campus Wireless on the Blink. Prime Suspect: iPhone

The service disruptions of Duke’s wireless network started two weeks after Apple released its iPhone on June 29, which has Duke’s Office of Information Technology speculating that spreading iPhones on campus are behind the outages. But this theory is still conjecture only, as the campus, along with Apple and Cisco Systems, the provider of Duke’s wireless routers, investigate the problem. “We don’t yet know whether this is an iPhone issue, a server issue or an issue between the server and the iPhone,” says Bill Cannon, the manager of news and information at the Office of Information Technology. “It’s not at all clear that it’s even iPhones, but we still think it probably is.”

A Hectic End of Summer for Duke’s Tech Staff

The Duke wireless predicament is still relatively minor, explains Epstein, with only “about 150 iPhones registered on the Duke network and many faculty and students off-campus for the summer.” But with the fall semester—and potentially hundreds more wireless-devouring iPhones—fast approaching, Duke’s tech specialists are scrambling to pinpoint and solve the problem before it spirals out of control and interferes with a bustling campus seeking to stay connected. “It’s not like the Wi-Fi is crashing,” says Cannon, “but we don’t want that to be the case—especially as the campus gets more crowded.” So while professors and students enjoy the final weeks of their summer vacation, Duke’s tech staff is, as Cannon tells Epstein, “too busy right now to be interviewed.”

Today, Duke. Tomorrow, the World?

Duke’s tech department hasn’t yet heard of other campuses experiencing similar wireless service disruptions, Epstein writes. The problem, at least for the time being, seems to be unique to Duke. So a skeleton campus waits for the Duke diagnosticians to get to the bottom of what, for right now, is still merely an annoyance. As for the rest of us? We can keep an eye on our iPhones. And if the wireless in your office, or at your school, or in your neighborhood starts crashing, start looking a little closer. Your iPhone might be trying to tell you something.

The Education Finance Advisors at NextStudent can help you figure in all your college expenses so that you get the student loan that best suits your needs. Don’t get caught short. Go to www.nextstudent.com for all your student loan needs.

Check back here next Friday for my next blog on Campus Life.

Student Loan Girl

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Apple iPhone Release Draws Near

Student Loan Girl — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:40:00 GMT

June 29^th, 2007. No, it is not a holiday, or the birthday of any historical figure of repute that I am aware of. That date will go down in history as being the birth of Apple’s new much-lauded iPhone. Even if you are not a college super techno-geek, you probably still know what is going on. After all, you could barely open your browser in the last six months without seeing one of many commercials promoting this fabulous new gadget, part phone, iPod, and internet browser.

If you are like me, you may be absolutely sick of seeing all the ads, which have oversaturated the marketplace to the extent that you may no longer pay any attention to them. You have got to hand it to Steve Jobs for the vision in putting something like this together, however, we have only a couple weeks to see if the “real deal” lives up to all they hype.

Limited Supplies to Create “Feeding Frenzy?”

The average college student is probably salivating, waiting to get his hands on something this cool, but those that actually attain one will probably be few and far between, as they say. In fact, I heard somewhere that Apple is only shipping 60 phones to any single AT&T store for the release date. So, if you want one, you may have to camp out over night or skip summer school classes or take a sick day from you new job so you can make sure you score the phone. Believe, me, there will be tons of competition.

I even talked to a few people that are planning to snatch up several phones, then immediately sell them on eBay for double or triple the retail price. And, oh, yeah, let us not forget the price. To be in the “hip elitist crowd” of brand new iPhone owners, you will need to shell out $500 for a 4GB unit or $700 for a phone with twice that memory. While the average college student probably will not be able to spring for it unless appealing to mom and dad, those of you who have just graduated and landed a great first gig, may be in luck. Is it worth the huge chunk of change? I guess we will have to wait and see.

The New RockStar of the Mobile Web Market?

From what I can gather, the phone has some pretty innovative features, all bundled into one pretty radical piece of technology. From the Read/WriteWeb blog, located at www.readwriteweb.com/archives/iphone_macworld07_keynote.php , “Steve Jobs said about the iPhone: ‘it's the internet in your pocket for the first time ever.’ He also called it ‘the ultimate digital device’.”

Check Out the Specs

Again, according to the ReadWriteWeb blog, here are some of the IPhone’s features:

“Instead of a standard keypad, the iPhone uses a patented Apple technology called "multi-touch". It doesn't use a stylus, has "multi-finger gestures" and claims to ignore unintended touches. Jobs compared it to two other revolutionary Apple UIs - the mouse on the Macintosh and the click wheel on the iPod.
3.5 inch touchscreen with a virtual keyboard.
iPhone runs OS X, Apple's standard operating system; according to Engadget's superb coverage : "It let us create desktop class applications and networking, not the cripled stuff you find on most phones, these are real desktop applications."
Syncs with iTunes: ‘iTunes is going to sync all your media to your iPhone -- but also a ton of data. Contacts, calendars, photos, notes, bookmarks, email accounts...’
Apple's design chops is all over the iPhone: ‘3.5-inch screen, highest resolution screen we've ever shipped, 160ppi. There's only one button, the ‘home’ button [...] thinner than any smartphone...’
2 megapixel camera built in
Outstanding media features - scroll through your music, widescreen video, album art, built-in speaker...
Sync your iPhone with your PC or Mac (for contacts etc)
Standard phone features - SMS, calendar, photos, etc. With photos there is a motion sensor that rotates photos when you turn the phone.
Visual voicemail
Rich HTML emails - works with any IMAP or POP3 email service. This spells trouble for Blackberry!
The Safari browser runs on iPhone – ‘it's the first fully-usable browser on a cellphone.’ Jobs shows the NYT running in the iPhone - the actual website, not a puny WAP version.
Google Maps
Widgets that connect to Internet seamlessly (via WiFi and EDGE)
Free ‘push’ IMAP email from Yahoo”

OK, so I learned something new too. The iPhone has a camera and some other features that I have never seen available on any other portable/mobile device. It appears to be quite user friendly (although many detractors claim otherwise) and even intuitive. I wonder what is going to happen with Blackberrys and other devices once the iPhone makes its appearance. Will it revolutionize the industry like the Mac did for graphic design? We will know soon enough!

Check back here next Friday for my next blog on Campus Life.

Student Loan Girl

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