University Plans iPad Student Paper

10:05 am, February 9th, 2010, Nicole Martinelli

CC-licensed, thanks GlennFleishman on Flickr.

Perhaps in a bid to become the world’s leading iCollege, Abilene Christian University will publish an edition of the school paper designed for iPad.

The Texas institution — where the IT studies department was rechristened iSchool — started equipping freshmen with iPhones and iPod Touches back in 2008. The iSchool also started prepping iPhone devs of the future with a 2009 programming course.

Since 2007, they’ve also published the twice-weekly school paper dubbed “The Optimist” (a commentary on future journalists?) for the iPhone.

“The faculty as a whole and the department discussed it, and we said we have to do this,” Dr. Cheryl Bacon, chairwoman of the department of journalism and mass communications told The Daily Orange. “It’s just too good of an opportunity to pass up.”

A crew of four professors — two from the journalism department and one each from iSchool and graphic design – plus 10 students are working on an edition to launch on the same day as the iPad in March.

Sure, they won’t be getting a lot of eyeballs for the goings-on around campus for those early editions, but it gives them time to work out what may be serious kinks that big name tech-savvy 1.0 pubs are also struggling with.

“We pay close attention to the way young people consume news,” ACU’s Kenneth Pybus, faculty adviser of The Optimist said in a press release. “They tend to use all the tools at their disposal to get information. With the new iPad, we definitely foresee the potential for an explosion in news consumption.”

What do you think, is “Optimism” justified?

Posted by Nicole Martinelli in News | Comment on this article

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About the author

Nicole Martinelli was born in San Francisco and has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. Cultish tendencies and love for DIY increased while living on the Old Continent, where tech came late and cost more in Big Mac index terms. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek. Since 1999, she's been tapping away at zoomata. You can also find her on Facebook, Linked in and Twitter.

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3 comments

As an ACU graduate, I am thrilled about the news. Back in my day (walking cane shaking in the air) the Optimist was publish weekly. For my statistics class, the professor cut a deal with the publisher to get a $700 software for $100 for the students (circa 1988). It was a big deal at the time. Now, kids buy a $35 add-on to Excel for the same class.

As far as iPad, the lack of Flash support is a deal breaker since so much of the web uses it.

Greg, on February 9th, 2010 at 12:40 pm

ACU home of bigotry and homophobia …. Well at least they use Mac’s to spread hate not PC’s .

Alex, on February 9th, 2010 at 1:50 pm

Nicole, great article. We are very excited to show the work led by our students. I have been involved with the student-developers and can’t wait for this project to highlight some of their talents.

Scott Kilmer, Director of New Media
Abilene Christian University

Scott Kilmer, on February 9th, 2010 at 2:33 pm