At last weeks FOTE09 event I heard about Oxford University’s experiences of using iTunes U during Peter Robinson’s presentation ‘A Pocket University: Open Content and Mobile Technology’. “But what is iTunes U?” I hear (some of) you cry … as I did the first time I heard the word/term/phrase. Very simply, in Apple’s own words, ‘iTunes U is a digital campus that never sleeps and can be reached from anywhere’ and ‘it gives any university or college a single home for all the audio and video course materials that faculty create or curate’ plus ‘it also makes it simple for students to find and download just what they’re looking for.’

iPod/iPhone/iTunes/Apple fans might be cheering at this point but I can also hear the sceptics crying ‘what about those who don’t have/like/use iPods/iPhones/iTunes?’ and ‘why would you hand all of your content to a third party?’ … which I must admit I also thought too when I first heard about iTunes U a few months ago. However, as with many of the presentations at FOTE09, Peter Robinson’s explanation of why and how iTunes U works for the Oxford University students and staff has made me think again … hence this blog.

What I heard about iTunes U was:

• Universities have lots of good stuff to support teaching and learning but they aren’t all great at (a) telling people it’s good (b) making it easy for those who know about the good stuff to find it  … iTunes U can help.
• The content can be stored on your own servers … you don’t have to hand it all over to Apple
• You can also have a web portal … which allows access to all of the resources without having to go through iTunes
• It’s free
• The audio can be MP3 and the video can be MPEG4 … not proprietary Apple formats
• With structured and guided support staff can create content to share relatively easily and quickly … and students can too
• Cross departmental sharing and working on a project like this can break down some of the barriers that may exist
• The legal side of who owns what and can share what with whom can be tricky but it can be overcome
• Marketing is a key to getting the students and staff on board … and Apple even have promotional advice for you on this

From Oxford University’s point of view (according to Peter Robinson) it has all been worth it. Here are few stats to support its success:

• 1 000 000 downloads and a number 1 hit in less than a year
• 2 500 downloads per week for popular feeds
• 956 items in 186 podcast feeds
• 90% of the downloads via iTunes, 10% via the parallel web portal

… more stats and information are available via the FOTE09 presentation or from the iTunes U at Oxford web portal, http://www.ox.ac.uk/itunes_u.

In my subsequent quest to find out more about the use of iTunes U, I came across this briefing paper from The University of Edinburgh about their new and developing presence on iTunes U … if you want to know a bit more, then this is worth looking at (imo).

So now I am going to spend a bit of time looking at the content on the Oxford University iTunes U and the iTunes U’s of the other Universities … The Open University, Coventry, Warwick, Brimingham City, UCL, Trinity College Dublin to name but a few of those from the British Isles. I could look at the content on my laptop but for a true test of how mobile my learning could be I shall download a selection to an iPod and see what I learn

Last week I attended (along with Justin from the RSC) the Future of Technology in Education 2009 event in London. It was one of those events where there were so many speakers and so much was said that there is far too much to record in one blog post … so all I am going to do here is to note down a few of the key points (imo) that were made and to display some of the photos that Justin took throughout the day for you to browse through.

The title of the event explains what it was all about but the event mainly focussed on cloud computing and social media. The speakers were from industry (Microsoft, Amazon, Huddle …) and education (numerous universities, one college, the School of Everthing …). The event was broadcast in Second Life, tweeted about and videos and presentations are available via the FOTE09 website.

For me, however, these were the key things that I heard:

• Embrace the cloud because it solves a problem you actually have, not just because it is cool (Dr Paul Miller, Cloud of Data)
• We used to be navigators finding our way along planned routes through the wealth of information available to us … now we are explorers finding our own way (Ray Fleming, Microsoft)
• Teachers and learners expect to be able to ‘plug and teach’ or ‘plug and learn’ i.e. they don’t want to have to know how all of the behind the scenes stuff works, they just want it to happen (Dr Bill Ashraf, University of Sussex)
• Leeds Metropolitain University love Google Apps and have learnt that you need to get in there and just do it because if you don’t the students will and the universities (organisations) will just be following. (Robert Moores)
• The world feels like it is spinning faster and faster  … technology has made the world more connected than ever before … the internet is changing everything … we need to change too (Will McInnes, Nixon McInnes)
• Students and teachers need to understand the potential of technology to get the most out of it (James Clay, Gloucester College)
• Things to do with regard to living (and educating) in a networked world: think globally not institutionally; the default for information needs to be ‘open’ not ‘closed’ so that people can always find what they are looking for; anything can be copied so don’t worry about it… and our role in all of this is as a ‘trusted guide’ (Nick Skelton, University of Bristol)
• Universities have lots of good ’stuff’ that students (and others) don’t know is there … Oxford University have used iTunes U to help them with this (Peter Robinson, Oxford University).
• Digital identity is not just about what you put on the web about yourself, its about what others put on there about you too (Shirley Williams, University of Reading)
• We have to all accept that learning does not just happen in institutions … that degree certificates are probably not the best way of representing a person and their abilities to an employer … that if universities don’t give people what they want, how they want it then learning will still happen outside universities… it did before they existed, after all (Dougald Hine, School of Everything)

That’s it for now but I will be blogging again soon in more detail about a few of the things I heard … until then, click the image below to be taken to the  photos I promised earlier: