One university in Texas is ensuring all its freshmen take a ‘byte into Apple.’

As part of its Connected Campus initiative, a plan to get the university wireless by 2011, 1,000 incoming Abilene Christian University freshmen were provided with their choice of an iPhone or an iPod Touch this fall.

Students were given the devices for free, but are responsible for activating and paying for the phone plan if they chose an iPhone, Connected Campus Web Integration and Programming Director James Langford said. AT&T and Apple representatives were on campus to help students set up their devices during the first week of school.

Though tuition rose for the 2008-2009 academic year, Langford said the funding for the initiative did not influence the increase in tuition prices.

‘The initiative is one big experiment,’ Langford said. ‘We think it will keep going, but it has to show some benefit to continue, or else it is just a gimmick.’

Abilene will replace the Apple products after two years of use, but if students leave school, they may have to pay the school to keep the device, Mobile Learning Research Director and English professor Bill Rankin said.

‘The exciting part about this technology is that we are convinced that these devices are an on-going trend and these are the devices that everyone will have for five years and our students will be using them in their jobs,’ Rankin said.

Rankin said he posts documents, class reminders, video and audio files from his iPhone instead of using paper handouts.

‘Because of Internet access, the real world is something I can bring into my classroom at a moment’s notice,’ he said.

Since an iPhone is a lot smaller than a laptop, it serves the same purpose without creating a barrier between student and teacher, Adams Center for Teaching and Learning director George Saltsman said.

‘It is not mandatory for teachers to use the technology in any way,’ Saltsman said. ‘We think that these tools are so compelling that they would want to be a part of it.