With smart phones and similar devices, students can compute easily anywhere, and leave the laptops back at the dorm or at home.

It's no secret that smart phones are the wave of the mobile device future, and at Abilene Christian University (TX), technologists recently embarked on an effort to embrace this technology and deploy an iPhone program that connects students and faculty through academic, social, and infrastructure applications.

The program, dubbed ACU Connected, will debut this fall with more than 1,000 students and faculty receiving either iPhone or iPod Touch tools from Apple, to use as mobile computing devices. These devices, empowered by wireless service from AT&T and applications from Google Apps, will enable students to leave their laptops at home when they go to class. According to George Saltsman, director of educational technology at ACU, applications of the tools will vary, but many educators have received training in mobile learning design and are calling upon this new knowledge to develop curricula that incorporate the phones to handle podcasts, flashcards, polls, and live assessment for use in classes across the university. Saltsman adds that the pilot will focus on freshmen and first-year students. The goals: to make computing easier for students, and to strengthen enrollment and retention as a result.

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