iTunes, the company’s platform for delivering fresh content to users of the iPhone, iPod, and the iPad has a unique elearning module that are open to the public at no cost. Steve Jobs of Apple have stepped beyond computers into the realm of the music industry, telecommunications, ebooks, and elearning online.
Steve Jobs of Apple have stepped beyond computers into the realm of the music industry,
telecommunications, ebooks, and elearning online. iTunes, the company’s platform for delivering fresh content to users of the iPhone, iPod, and the iPad has a unique elearning module that are open to the public at no cost.
Ivy League schools collaborated with Apple to offer free courses through the iTunes U sites that is provided for each university. Some of the prominent ones are MIT or Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Cambridge, Harvard, and Princeton.
Top universities around the world have recognized the potential of the program from the start. In 2006, École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Paris or HEC Paris partnered with Apple in an experiment which included handing out iPod Touches to new MBA students. Lectures were recorded and uploaded in the universities iTunes U site and students were welcome to download the lectures on their iPod. Needless to say, the experiment resulted in resounding success. Redundant questions were avoided in the lectures, and student presentations improved because the students were able to review their performance on the iPod.
Universities are not the only contributors to iTunes U. Like every other traditional university campus, education is supplemented by libraries, museums, traditional and alternative media. Institutions like the New York Public Library, Museum of Modern Art, Public Radio International and PBS stations have all contributed to the elearning online university for students to access reliable information instead of unverified and unfiltered content on the web.
Most of the content on the iTunes U sites are lectures from actual classes but the program also includes pdf files, films, video clips, audio books, presentations, and other course materials. There are a total of thirteen categories available to the public and these are: Business, Engineering, Fine Arts, Health and Medicine, History, Humanities, Language, Literature, Mathematics, Science, Social Science, Society, and Teaching and Education.
Although there are thousands of course materials that are available to the public, the application also allows exclusive internal content for actual students. To control the internal access to exclusive content, students are given a password to open the content of their own university’s virtual academic community.
Elearning online students can access the university anytime. All you need to download is the iTunes software that comes for free. Register your profile for free on iTunes and you are ready to download content on your Apple device.
iTunes have always had podcasts and video casts that tackle all sorts of subjects for free but what makes the iTunes University different from these podcasts is the quality, veracity and reliability of the content. To date, there are more than 600 participating universities around the world and more than 250,000 lectures available for download.
iTunes U really set the standard for mobile, free, online elearning because of the user-friendliness of the program and the sheer number of reliable references. Gaining access to lectures from prestigious universities for free and the ability to create a healthy environment or community for students is an effective way to promote education not just in the United States but all over the world.
