iStanford - Why Not i(insert your college here)

Colleague Kevin Burkitt pointed me to this story from Time.com. It's great to see schools like Stanford University and MIT leading the way, but there's no reason why smaller schools and even community colleges shouldn't be innovating - or even leading the way. It doesn't hurt that Stanford has an iPhone programming course, but what's stop us from doing the same? Read Are Your Students Programming for the iPhone and Other Mobile Platforms? where I share the following recommendations:

From the story:

"iStanford," which launched Oct. 1, is pretty straightforward: users can access a campus map and course catalog, e-mail professors and get news and information about sports teams. Nothing wildly innovative about that.

But the newest version, slated to arrive shortly, also allows students to add and drop courses, see the real-time whereabouts of the on-campus shuttle bus, review their grades and course history and perform a variety of other administrative tasks that are normally accessible only over secure campus networks. That's because, in an unusual move, Stanford's IT folks allowed the developers to connect to core computer systems at Stanford.

The initial screen offers very basic and sparse interface, but we should expect more soon as the features listed above begin to be integrated.

This is the directory application, which links to Stanford's online directory.Here's the result of my search for Lessig (reading his book Remix now). He's moving to Harvard by the way, so not sure how much longer he'll be listed here.

  

If you click on the courses icon, you can explore by department or ...

  

... search by keyword. Notice the iPhone programming course - which I cover in Be Like Stanford! Either method allows you to get course and instructor information.

  

Clicking athletics shows you all the sports at Stanford with links to News, Schedule and Scores.

  

Finally, a searchable campus map that integrates the iPhone's GPS capability. I'll be in San Francisco next week, so I will have to see if I can hop over to Stanford and try out the map!