In an effort to congratulate freshmen at Abiliene Christian University, the board decided to offer all freshmen a free Apple product of their choice: iPhone or iPod Touch. According to the university, both devices will have pre-installed applications that are suppose to help students in academic activities and studying, but I have to wonder if that is really true.

Of course that students are pleased with receiving a free iPhone, and according to freshmen named Halie Davis, the usage of the phone on class is regular:

If your teacher says ‘get out your iPhone and look up a word’ you can do a Google search or check Wikipedia on the Internet. It’s really fast.

There are 2 functionalities that make the iPhonet useful at Abilene Christian University:

- mymobile application to search for class information like the teacher’s name, and 3D map of campus

- using Xythos (online document management system) to read PDF files, assignments, and more.

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