Cullmann Design Blog

I like to learn something everyday. It needn’t be an epiphany or the secret to life, but I really like the idea that every evening comes to an end with some fact or bit of knowledge that I hadn’t had that morning. I have to admit that I get a tremendous amount of these daily facts or learning from the internet. Never has such a wide variety of subjects or shear amount of information been so easily accessible to so many and so easily.

Enter iTunes U

iTunes U is a hosted resource offered by apple through iTunes. It’s a basic and very cool framework for anyone to create a comprehensive course or online learning experience to be distributed via the iTunes network. Although I am leery of closed infrastructures like iTunes, the scale of audience you can reach and the dominance of Apple’s consumer media devices makes this a fantastic new playground for educators and organizations. Content creators can apply to enter the iTunes U store, upload and create a custom page for their institution. The content can be arranged (and once published searched) by subject, topic or institution. There is space for an institution summary, class syllabus and individual class description. Classes can be distributed as audio or video. Content creators can also control the distribution and allow access by parties via controlled or free distribution. The classes can be updated real-time like a regular semester class or cumulatively as a retrospective.