Tama’s eLearning Blog

iTunes U: Click, Sync, Learn is Apple’s new service which offers to host media files for tertiary institutions has gone live. Apple describes it as:

Education beyond the classroom

iTunes U* is a free, hosted service for colleges and universities that provides easy access to your educational content, including lectures and interviews 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It’s the most powerful way to manage a broad range of audio or video content and make it available quickly and easily to students, faculty, and staff. And it is the only application that supports the overwhelmingly popular iPod. iTunes U also offers you the simplicity and mobility you expect from Apple because it is based on the same easy-to-use technology of iTunes Music Store.

Strategically, this is a smart move for Apple. Universities using the iTunes interface would automatically familiarise millions of Apple’s key demographic with the iTunes service and one click away is Apple’s money-making iTunes store (well, almost money making) and, more importantly, the sales of iPods would be pretty much be linked to first-year enrolement numbers for the next few years!

Of course, as D’Arcy Norman notes, while this is potentially a great service, the trade-off seems to be that Apple will only host files in iPod-specific formats (so AIFFs, not MP3s, I think), BUT Apple’s service terms would have to allow universities to (a) retain full intellectual property rights and (b) therefor be able to also host non-iPod-specific formats themselves if needs be.  The website doesn’t show these terms yet (but I’ve signed up to get more info and should receive them within seven days).  Certainly, this is one service worth watching!