Learning with iTunes U

By Harry Smals on 27 April 2010

While Apple launched its iPad in the States, it promoted its new digital learning environment – iTunes U – in Nederland. This was quickly followed by the news that Apple will introduce iAd advertisements in its apps, and that a prototype of the new iPhone was “stolen”. Apple knows how to create a hype, and how to create an ecosystem of hardware and software that surrounds more and more people!

Adjiedj Bakas was guest-speaker at the Dutch iTunes U information-meeting. He presented some developments that could be relevant for higher education in Nederland. One of these developments is that technology will be everywhere. Already it is unthinkable that people do NOT have a phone or MP3-player with them, but it will become normal that technology will be part of our body; pacemakers and artificial legs will become more common as the population becomes older.

Think about the possibilities that lay ahead when chips from your iPhone and credit-card are integrated and placed inside your body. Wouldn’t it be easy to learn a book, by simply downloading it into your skull with bluetooth? The unexpected will become true. Who would have thought that StarTrek technology would become reality? Well, it is!

What is iTunes U?

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iTunes U is a smart invention. It’s a distribution-system for educational materials. This distribution-system is based on the infrastructure of iTunes. Consequently it is already paid by the music industry and therefore it is for free. A university or university of applied science can publish materials on iTunes U and make it available for everybody who has access to the normal iTunes Store. So, this is almost everybody with an iPhone, iPad, a Mac, or a PC, because iTunes can be downloaded for free on any PC.

This can make iTunes U another serious threat from Apple to Google. “Serious” in two senses; not only “big”, but also “academic” versus “popular”. When you search for information using Google it will give you the most popular places from the entire internet. When you search for information via iTunes U, it can only give you information posted by institutions for higher education; iTunes U will only serve you serious information.

For an institution iTunes U can be a powerful digital learning environment. Apart from offering information to everyone, an institution can also offer specific materials only for students and employees who are logged in to its own intranet. This makes it possible that a student attends a lecture, and while he is travelling back home the accompanying weblectures, podcasts, powerpoints, studyguides, etc. are updated on his iPhone or laptop.

The Delft University of Technology was the first Dutch university to use iTunes U and this university discovered that for their international students downloading weblectures is a great way to discuss the lectures they had just attended. Especially when they do not understand English very well, this is a solution for them. They can discuss the weblecture with each other and make sense of it. This will make the teaching process more effective and more efficient.

For all students – not only international students – iTunes U will be a more relevant digital learning environment than the traditional intranet. For the simple fact that students do not regularly log in to the intranet, but many of them often go to the iTunes Store. This makes iTunes U a relevant element of the digital ecosphere that Apple creates with its hardware and software.

tagged with: smart invention, i-tunes, education

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