by Playfuls Staff |
30th January 2006
It's already quite clear that Apple's (and Steve Jobs’) marketing strategy for the company's iPod digital music players and iTunes online music store has been pure genius, and possibly one of the best ever in the history of corporate products. And now, the company has decided to take the iTunes concept one step further, and into one of the social areas where its iPods enjoy the highest levels of popularity: universities.[more]
Thus, as reported by May Wong for the Associated Press, Apple Computer Inc. has introduced "iTunes U," a nationwide expansion of a service that puts course lectures and other educational materials online and on-the-go via Apple's iTunes software.
Internet access to college lectures is nothing new, but listening to them anytime, anywhere on portable gadgets is a more recent phenomenon of the digital age, spurred in part by the popularity of podcasts, or downloadable audio files.
The University of Missouri had already been offering podcasts of lectures through its school network before it signed up with Apple last summer as a pilot school. But "iTunes U" offered a software and service package - in Apple's reputedly easy-to-use interface - all for free, said Keith Politte, the development officer at the university's School of Journalism.
The market dominance of Apple's iTunes Music Store and iPods, which helped spawn the podcast movement, was also quite important in this matter.
"Our students are digital natives. We seek to meet our students where they are, and iTunes is the interface that most of our students are already familiar with," Politte said.
Apple's free, hosted service offers universities a customized version of the iTunes software, allowing schools to post podcasts, audio books or video content on their iTunes-affiliated Web sites. The iTunes-based material would be accessible on Windows-based or Apple Macintosh computers and transferable to portable devices, including Apple's iPods.
The service lets institutions choose the audio and video formats they want in producing the content. Universities can also control how they want to limit access to the online materials - to restricted groups or open to the public.
Universities can also choose to let students - and not just faculty - upload material to the site. The University of Missouri, for instance, is using iTunes U as a communication vehicle, letting students post their work on the site for quick feedback from professors, Politte said.
Schools and universities have historically been major contributors to Apple's computer sales. Now with the free iTunes U service, Apple "is leveraging the ubiquity that we've established on campuses with iPods and iTunes," said Chris Bell, Apple's director of product marketing for iTunes.
The service could make students regular, if not daily, visitors to iTunes. Click once on a lecture and the digital audio file will show up on the student's iTunes jukebox library, ready for playback on an iPod or a computer.
However, there could also be a negative side to this initiative. The students’ lecture attendance could plummet, because, after all, who needs to be there, in class, when you can sit in your own dorm-room and listen to the lecture on your iPod? And who knows, perhaps even watch a video recording of the lecture, on your brand new video iPod. In any case, this seem to be the future of the educational process, and Apple is already there.
