Southern Mississippi Students Getting Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Samsung announced today that all students in the University of Southern Mississippi Honors College pilot program will be receiving a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet. Not every university that gives away tablets thinks the iPad is the best choice. The university is offering a thousand students the tablets via private funds. Each tablet comes pre-installed with Blackboard Mobile Learn, which provides access to course materials, syllabi, eBooks, students’ grades and schedules. The app sends out notifications to students about things like cancelled classes or due dates.

Some of the benefits of the combination of the Galaxy Tab and the Blackboard Mobile Learn app are:

• Professors can send out instant announcements.
• Students and teachers can interact in real-time or over time with comments and posts in the blogging system.
• Students can see their grades.
• Professors can share documents and course information.
• Students can return assignments.

Below is a video demonstrating the Android version of the app.

https://youtu.be/OfTKhX8VSj8

The students and professors will share the same hardware and apps making it easier to share content. They won’t have to worry about converting documents or books to work on a different system.

They will use the Wi-Fi only version of the Tab running Honeycomb 3.1 instead of the currently unavailable 3.2. I’m sure some students and professors might wish they had access to the new 4G LTE version on Verizon that we showed you.

We’ve heard about different schools and municipalities using the iPad before. Few reports have surfaced about groups centering around an Android platform in this way. As Android matures this will likely become more common.