Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Smartphones added to students' must-haves
JANEK LOWE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Enlarge Image
Second-year Red River College students Aggie Semeniuk (from left), Jennifer Hanson and Jasmine Tara check out each other’s iPhones with instructors Kenton Larsen and Cathy Hanson Monday. Mobile devices are becoming mandatory for the college’s creative communications students.
Textbooks, pens, bookbag? Check.
IPhones, iPods, and iPads? Check that too: For the first time, new students to Red River College's creative communications program will have to bring one of the flashy gizmos (or another mobile device, such as a BlackBerry) to school when classes start Aug. 31.
"We looked ahead and we said, 'Where are things going? What's going on?' The move to mobile application-based devices is upon us," said RRC instructor Kenton Larsen, who helped champion the change in staff discussions over the last few years. "I could see a point coming where if we don't introduce these and don't use them, we're going to look like we don't know our stuff."
Remember when colleges flipped about students carrying cellphones to class? Not anymore: The time for new media in schools, Larsen says, is now. At creative communications, students study advertising, public relations, broadcasting and journalism; in these fields, social media and instant communication are a juggernaut. Journalists file stories from their phones, companies are hiring PR reps just to manage their Facebook and Twitter accounts, and the Old Spice Guy breathed new life into an old brand just by posting some interactive videos on YouTube.
For future grads to stay competitive, Larsen says, they must master the mobile trend. Within five years, creative communications students could be designing their own smartphone applications; already, Larsen plans to introduce an "app of the day" segment in his advertising and public relations classes.
In making the goodies mandatory for the 75 incoming students, RRC joins schools such as the University of Saskatchewan and colleges in Arizona and New York, which are already pushing mobile-device literacy on students in some fields. "I think it's a really good way to stay connected. Especially with journalism, a lot of print journalism they say is dying slowly, so going to this digital age is very important," said Albertine Watson, 21, who will be toting her iPad when she starts creative communications next week. "I'm pretty excited. Right now, apps are still sort of in their novelty stage... (but) I think (new) media is going to become more or less how people consume media."
Still, no change comes without a price, and some worry this one could be a doozy for cash-strapped students: A basic iPod Touch costs more than $300. "They're very, very helpful, but they're also very pricey," said second-year creative communications student Tammy Karatchuk, who wrote about her concerns for an upcoming issue of RRC's student paper The Projector.
As a second-year student, Karatchuk is exempt from the new iPhone requirement. But she worries about incoming students who are tight on funds. "I've talked to one guy who was wondering how he would pay for tuition, never mind a smartphone. I kind of wish they had made it optional."
Larsen is aware of the concerns, but stresses that some of the biggest costs linked to smartphones aren't mandatory. Students are not required to get a cellphone contract or data plan -- they can tap into the college's free wireless Internet instead -- and two expensive textbooks were cut from the shopping list this year to balance the cost.
melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 30, 2010 B4
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