Mobile computing is quickly becoming involved in nearly every aspect of our lives. How we find directions, how we pay for goods, how we get our news, how we socially interconnect with others, and also as a verification of who we are, and nowhere is this more evident than in today’s high-tech colleges. Students and faculty are both using mobile smart phone and mobile computing applications around campus.
They serve as virtual credit cards, and identification for getting into dorm rooms, cafeterias, and secured areas on campus. These are both safety features, and convenience factors. Also, businesses that cater to college students can use such virtual ID systems to allow the students to get into concerts, exhibits, and sporting events – sometimes free of charge, and other times their virtual ID system will bill their college account.
In fact, there was a very interesting article in CR80 News in the fall 2010 magazine edition titled; “CSU’s Mobile App Looks to Replace Student IDs,” and in this brief article was a question-and-answer session with one of the top software architects of college mobile technologies.
Indeed, this is an extremely good use of this technology, and it works on the student’s personal tech device, no matter what they own. They may own a tablet computer running a Microsoft-based operating system, or perhaps they have a blackberry or an iPhone. These systems now work with whatever technology the student already owns, and therefore it becomes a universal system.
Many students and more so, their parents, are concerned with privacy. If such systems exist, the students can be tracked everywhere they go, and everything they do could be digitally recorded. In many aspects that is a problem, but in other aspects it also provides a layer of safety. It can be used to help culprits causing crimes, thus, protecting the rest of the students. It also prevents the students from having their credit card stolen.
If you’d like to learn more about this type of mobile application and mobile verification computing, I recommend you go and read that article, and then follow up online with some of the other interesting things being offered. Things like barcode scanners built into the mobile tech devices, giving information about the product, and also allowing the student to go online and check prices elsewhere at other retailers for the same product, therefore saving the money.
Indeed, I hope you please consider all this, and think on it. If you have something relevant to add, I surely hope you will look up my e-mail and give me your thoughts.