Edutainment on the Bus

What makes iTunes U so interesting is that it combines some of the benefits of portable entertainment devices with a popular sideline of digital downloads, the podcast, to offer students enhanced learning.

iTunes U is a virtual place of learning. It means you can study when and wherever you like. It was created in collaboration with universities and includes hundreds of higher education institutions around the world. Instead of always having to go to a campus or classroom, iTunes U lets you go to the iTunes store instead and retrieve recorded material that can be played back on your PC or Mac computer, or downloaded onto an iPod or other MP3 player - just like music, a video or a podcast.
You might not think that the stealthy invasion of your personal listening device by schools and universities is such a good thing, but if you had missed an important lecture or wanted to find out more about your chosen place of learning before starting a new course, you might find it useful if you could just listen to it - or even watch it - on your MP3 player.
On the blog ‘Scraping the fringe', one former student describes the material available from iTunes U as "edutainment and lectures but in podcast form". This blogger says he or she (it's not easy to tell which from the blog) discovered videos, famous people's speech and current events topics. "I devoured them. I downloaded more of them. I searched for them.
"It's really funny that now I am out of school and I am learning more than I should. This actually reminds me of the reason why I went to class. I went to class because I didn't want to read my course books at home. I only read something while being on the bus. Once I get off I never opened a course book again."
iTunes U uses Apple's iTunes as a central storage point for lectures and learning material that you can listen to on your PC or your iPod or iPhone, assuming you're lucky enough to already own one - which in New Zealand is probably unlikely.

Otago Uni on iTunes U
> Wild Flicks: the documentaries of the Science Communications Master's students
> Marama Hall lunchtime concert series and special events: featuring performances from the Department of Music
> Contemporary music items
> Inaugural professorial lectures
> Life at Otago: a short clip about Otago's student life
> The God Boy: a 2004 Opera
> Library tours
> IT seminars and training

iTunes U is searchable
On iTunes U you can search for material by ‘top downloads', by category - where you'll find links for Fine Arts, History, Mathematics and Science, as well as other areas of interest - or by subject (using the iTunes U category in ‘Power Search'). Alternatively you can search for a particular university or institution, such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa).
But iTunes U in the iTunes Store doesn't only include material from international and US locations. It now features free educational content from places of learning in Australia and New Zealand, including lectures, guest speeches and videos from the Australian National University, Griffith University, Swinburne University, University of Melbourne, University of NSW, University of WA and New Zealand's University of Otago (the first of our universities to deliver content through the iTunes Store).
Otago director of information technology services Mike Harte says being able to offer free material via the iTunes Store gives Otago University an international audience so it can showcase its teaching and research efforts. "We already have more than 100 audio and video files available and plan to add more. The clips are of a high standard and include highly acclaimed wildlife documentaries produced by the science communication master's students in natural history filmmaking. There are also music clips from both our classical and contemporary rock programmes and the University's professorial and other public lectures."
So while iTunes U isn't likely to replace going to school or university lectures, it certainly offers a free and relatively painless way of learning about subjects - possibly when you might not even have been expecting to.

What do you think?
Is iTunes U is a good idea? As an actv8 reader, do you see yourself making use of it? Check it out and drop us an email if you have any comments or suggestions for possible improvements, and we'll pass them along to Apple: heyyouguys@actv8.co.nz