Thanksgiving Part 2

Here is a second clip from Boston University that is a less factual and more humorous.

I hope these two clips provide you with a look at the range of media that iTunesU offers. Colleges and universities can present potential course content or spotlight campus life and those who inhabit it. I hope that your Thanksgiving experience and knowledge are improved after watching these clips. Happy Thanksgiving!!

Thanksgiving Part 1

This week I searched Thanksgiving in the general iTunes search window. I scrolled down to the iTunesU section where there were 50 listings. I selected a short video clip from Boston University to represent the potential media that iTunesU offers. There is a chance that you will not be able to view the clip if you do not have iTunes installed on your computer. Please let me know if this is true or not.

This is a historical look at Thanksgiving. I did not know these facts behind the holiday.

An interesting note... I had to upgrade to a newer version of iTunes and I noticed that the older version did not have a menu tab for iTunesU. It took me a while to figure out that I had to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to find a link to iTunesU. Previously, I was accessing iTunesU from its website. The newer version, iTunes 10, does have a menu button for iTunesU. This suggests to me that there has been an increase in its usage and value, which warrants an easier way to get to it.

To be honest, I am having a hard time coming up with topics to blog about for iTunesU. I would appreciate it if the followers would include any questions or things you would like to know about in your comments for this or future postings.

At the bottom of the iTunesU homepage there is a link for the Monthly iTunesU Spotlight.I decided to click on it to gain some inspiration for this week's blog. As I should have guessed, November's Spotlight is on United States History and Politics. The opening description does a nice job of hooking users into to wanting to know more. The content is divided into 5 collections; US Politics, Early American History, Famous American Figures, Insightful Inspirations, and More to Explore. There were clips ranging in duration from less than one minute to over an hour long. Some of the clips were very new and discussed attack campaigning and the Tea Party Movement. Others were very historical and relevant to what is currently going on in our country. I was happy to see that there was a link to American History: Speeches and Essays, created by the Florida Department of Education and the University of South Florida, which presented very famous moments in history geared towards a K-12 audience. Stanford had 5 features links on the Spotlight page and other universities also present content that would be made available for specific academic courses. I wonder if the courses are repeated each year for the content is used for more than just one semester. Some of the topics are very nichey and deal with tapped White House phone calls and specific time periods and individuals. I wonder what qualifies a clip for potential inclusion in the Monthly Spotlight other than matching the topic. I wonder if next month's spotlight will be on the December holidays or something along those lines.

What's on iTunesU?

Last week I briefly described what iTuneU is. This week I will inform you of what can actually be found on it. The iTunesU website states that over 600 universities have active sites. When searching the list of them, I found it interesting the Syracuse University did not have one and SUNY Cortland did. Cortland's site has two sections, Course Podcasts and Welcomes You. The Course Podcasts section contains information about specific courses that are offered as well as podcasts utilized in the courses to deliver content. The Welcome You section provides more general information about campus life and ways to use the technology hosted on the iTunesU site. Most of the content on the SUNY Cortland site was uploaded in 2008 and only two links were updated in 2010. I also looked at Cornell's site and the oldest update on their homepage was from yesterday. Cornell's site provides three sections; Featured, Fields of Study, and Campus and Community. The most frequently downloaded podcasts are listed at the top of the page as well as links to key Cornell University websites.

Beyond Campus allows visitors to access content from art and science museums, businesses, libraries, and news outlets. Clicking around on things that seemed interesting, I found content lasting from a few seconds to over an hour. It wasn't just all lectures either. There were slideshows, entire exhibit tours, video clips, segments of television shows, and audio only files. Every thing I saw was free of charge and there were options to subscribe to specific sections within sites.

 I was excited to see a k-12 section on the iTunesU main page. There are 25 links in this sections. Many of them are state departments of education. Maine's looked much more interesting than Virginia's. New Jersey claims 5 of the links and provide content from larger school districts. There are a few links from outside of the United States. Teacher's TV separates its content into primary and secondary for easy searching for appropriate podcasts by topic.

The final link offered by the homepage is the Power Search. It allows users to search the entire iTunesU library by title, description, or university.

There appears to be a lot of material on iTunesU to explore. I will provide more insight in the weeks to come about what I find.