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Sep 21, 2006 8:37 am US/Eastern
Tech Styles: 'Air Baruch' Takes College Mobile
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
Technology has found its way into college campuses everywhere, and now, a new idea is putting all that tech in the palm of your hand. It's called "Rave Wireless," and its helping keep students on time and helps them save time.
"We only have commuting students and so their time on campus is very limited, so they need help in managing it…so we've designed a number of our Web-based services now to be delivered to them on their cell phone," said Baruch College Chief Information Officer Arthur Downing.
At Baruch College, it's simply called "Air Baruch," and it is catching on with the student population.
"At the moment we have 3,700 users out of the student body of 15,000, so pretty much across the board it has gained wide acceptance," Downing said.
Yelena Zlatkina, a student at Baruch, said, "I've been using it since last year since it first came to the school. It puts a student's entire world in one place, instead of having to go into five difference places to find five different things you have it all in one place."
Because Zlatkina works, she doesn't often have a chance to check her e-mail. The Air Baruch service lets her know when she has messages or alerts from the school and passes that information to her cell phone, saving her time.
The Rave service even has a social networking aspect, similar to Web sites like mySpace. The groups can be built to put students with similar interests in touch with each other, and any student can build a group for anything from a coffee drinkers group to the business mathematics group.
For the long term, Downing hopes the service will continue to save time and bring more students together.
"We want to be able to deliver our services and help students communicate with one another, and build stronger social networks on campus, entirely on their mobile devices including their cell phone. So, just about every piece of business we transact with our students, we want to be able to offer it on their cell phones," Downing said.
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