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.
Greg,
ReplyDeleteI am intrigued that Syracuse University does not have an active site. You would think the sheer number of classes and students would warrant one. Do you know what department would make the determination as to whether or not the University would have an active site?
Hi Greg:
ReplyDeleteI liked the "Beyond Campus" section which will allow users to connect to a plethora of alternative resources that seem very engaging. Also, the fact that many of the resources are available free of charge is just really amazing! In terms of the K-12 section was there anything from Syracuse or NYC posted?
~Aja
Sue, I do not know who would be responsible for creating and maintaining a site for SU but I would guess it would either have to be the IT department or possibly the recruitment center.
ReplyDeleteAja, I do not believe that there was anything from New York State on there but I will check again.
Aja, The currently is no content from New York State or City in the K-12 section of iTunesU.
ReplyDeleteHi Greg:
ReplyDeleteThank you for the direct follow-up. It would have been nice if the website had NY state specific content. If they have a customer service page/contact limk, I wonder if you could submit a request and let us know if you get a return response.