Japanese University Tracks Students via Free iPhones

We know that Japanese are very serious when it comes to academic excellence and mobile phone usage, and this is a “great” example of their talent. Ayokama Gakuin, a Tokyo based University, offers a free iPhone to students in the School of Social Informatics, one would say this is a cool present, but the phone will be used as a tracking device to monitor student presence on campus, mainly to prevent cheating during roll calls. Other than that, the device will be used for digital lectures (podcast), homework and taking tests.

The iPhone hardware is “free” in Japan and the University covers the basic fee with limited downloading . Well, that’s better than the University of Missouri which requires its journalism students to buy an iPhone without helping them with the cost.