Solution to the Problem
For this presentation I decided to screen record the possible mockups of an iTunes University presence using Photoshop. I then wrote the script and screen recorded the presentation using TechSmith Camtasia software.
This video was presented to the Information Technology (IT) Department Director and staff as they would be a key decision maker and stakeholder of adopting and managing this technology on campus. Ultimately the college decided not to pursue using iTunes University to house and make podcasts available.
iTunes University was provided by Apple, Inc. for schools, colleges and universities from 2007 through the end of 2021.
Video Text Transcription
[music playing]
(Text on Screen: iTunes University and Heartland Community College)
(Tom Corcoran, Media Technologist Speaking)
This demonstration is a mockup of what Heartland Community Colleges' iTunes University presence could look like.
Students would be given a direct link to Heartland Community Colleges' entry in iTunes or they could search the iTunes Store for Heartland Community College.
Once here they would see a break down of the podcasts in a format similar to this. This is only one option of how the content could be arranged and the graphical look could be presented. In this example News and Information is separated out from Academic Divisions and Continuing Education. Each of the Academic Divisions icons has been left blank showing that each of these could have their own unique logo developed by marketing to distinguish them from each other.
News and Information would contain all of the non-course specific information about Heartland Community College. This information would most likely be open to the public such as speaker series events, the Hear and Know Show podcasts information for new student orientation (Under Student Services), and any other information that would need to be widely distributed college wide or community wide. If there were a new security and safety video that needed to be shown to all students, administration, faculty, and staff that video would be readily available twenty-four hours a day seven days a week and would only need to be updated in one central location. If ITS had information about a roll out of new technology or computer updates that information would be easily accessible. And this information doesn’t have to be only audio or video. PDF documents, Microsoft Word documents and other files can also be distributed using iTunes University.
As for Academic Divisions and Continuing Education, if there was information that needed to be held back from general consumption and only for a specific audience or students enrolled at Heartland Community College, a login prompt can be created for the college allowing only authorized users access to that material.
So to go into more detail about what it would look like to navigate into Academic Divisions and Continuing Education lets click on Technology Division. You an see by the breadcrumb at the top of the screen exactly where you are at in relation to the home page for Heartland Community College in iTunes University. Also the banner shows that you are looking at the Technology Division disciplines. The graphic at the top of the screen could even be changed out reflecting the specific Divisions and Disciplines. At a glance you can see that there are 16 podcast tracks in the Digital Media discipline. So let's take a look at Digital Media. By clicking on it that brings you to the Course level where you can start to see individual course titles. Again the breadcrumb shows where you are at within iTunes University and Heartland Community Colleges' entry. You can click on these breadcrumbs at any time to take you back up a level or several levels. Or you can use the back and forward arrows to navigate as well. To get into a specific class you would just click the course title and this will change the view to show you the information about the course, instructors name, number of tracks available and a description of the course. Down in the lower section of the screen is where the actual podcast, vodcast/video files, and PDF or other items are stored. The name of the track, time, instructors name/narrator of the podcast, and the album (in this case the course name) is available. A track can be double clicked to listen to that track just in the iTunes directory or a specific track can be downloaded into the podcast library in the iTunes application on the end users/students computer by clicking the Get button. Also the podcast can be subscribed to by clicking Subscribe. The subscribe button will make it so every time a student is using that computer they can open iTunes application and new episodes will download once they become available. This allows the student to simply refresh their subscription list and the new content comes to them instead of having them go out and search for the new content. Once the content is downloaded onto their computer they can then hook up an MP3 player like an iPod and take the course content with them anywhere they go.
iTunes University is free and Apple, Inc. does all of the "back end" work for the instructors making their podcasts available for download and "subscribable". In order to make podcasts and content subscribable normally an XML file is used to create an RSS feed which would then need to be linked to the audio/video file and all of this needs to be saved on web servers. The server space, training required to inform faculty in how to create their own xml files and upload all of this into Heartland Community College's servers would be extensive. And yet iTunes University can be thought of almost as a sort of course management system. Instructors log in, they upload there podcasts, video files or PDFs, make their content available for download and then students navigate to that course either subscribing to the content or simply getting individual files to listen to, view or read (in the case of PDFs or other file types). Apple also hosts all of the podcasts on their own server saving the college server space.
A downside to using iTunes University is that the subscriptions are not portable. That is the podcasts you have downloaded or are subscribed to don't go from computer to computer with you like web based email or even RSS feed readers such as Google Reader. So each day you would need to check for new podcasts either first thing that day or even periodically throughout the day on that computer and then transferring them over to an MP3 player to taken them portably. The reason that they are not portable in the web mail sense is that in order for the files to be transferred to an MP3 player they need to exist on the end users machine not as a web based file.
Overall iTunes University is a great option for institutions seeking a central location to store and distribute all of their audio, video and other files. It is cross platform so both Windows and Macintosh users can use the iTunes University. The application iTunes itself is free to download and is easy to update. The podcasts and vodcasts can be easily created using technology that Heartland Community College already possesses and more and more institutions are going toward delivering content to students, staff and community members in terms of podcasts and vodcasts. Taking one look at the number of colleges in iTunes University, the types of institutions that have become mainstays in this directory such as Stanford, Yale, UC Berkely, Penn State and others, and the influx of students with an interest in YouTube, Instant Messaging, Blogging and other new media iTunes University would be an excellent way for Heartland Community College to join in on what I believe is honestly becoming the future of education.
[music playing]
(Text on Screen: iTunes University and Heartland Community College narrated by Instructional Development Center Media Technologist Tom Corcoran, Heartland Community College, 2007)
