Nearly one year ago Apple announced the development of iTunes U, a
space within the Apple infrastructure dedicated to the support of
higher education podcast development. By working in collaboration with
a number of colleges and universities, Apple has developed a unique
environment that removes many of the barriers previously hindering
educators from entering the realm of podcasting. iTunes U provides
disk space, bandwidth, and a simplified mechanism for publishing a
podcast 'feed' in a familiar environment to both educators and
students alike, iTunes.

Since the initial announcement, hundreds of schools have signed on to
begin taking advantage of this unique new media opportunity. Arizona
State University was an early adopter. We initially began to
transition from our previous podcasting infrastructure and mechanisms
last summer, and started to more fully focus our efforts throughout
the Fall 2006 semester. It has been an exciting time of growth and
development as we have moved throughout this year from only a handful
of ASU podcasts to now several hundred of departments, schools, and
individual faculty and researchers signing onto our ASU on iTunes U
environment. However, despite the initial buzz among educational
podcasters, iTunes U has remained a fairly obscure entity throughout
the rest of the mediated world. Though now, that has changed. Apple
begun the transition of iTunes U from the isolated corners of its own
research and development network into the public iTunes Music Store.

"For Apple announced"CUPERTINO, California-May 30, 2007-Apple® today
announced the launch of iTunes® U, a dedicated area within the iTunes
Store (www.itunes.com) featuring free content such as course lectures,
language lessons, lab demonstrations, sports highlights and campus
tours provided by top US colleges and universities including Stanford
University, UC Berkeley, Duke University and MIT."
(http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/05/30itunesu.html)

This is an excellent and welcome development. Prior to this move,
content served by individual iTunes U institutions has been somewhat
clouded by obscurity. iTunes U provides mechanisms for both 'Private'
content that is typically dedicated and available only to a select
registered audience (students enrolled in a particular class for
example), as well as 'Public' content which is available and
consumable by the world at large. However, such public content has
likely not seen as wide an audience as many would have liked. One had
to know of the existence of iTunes U public content, and for that
matter any individual institution's entire iTunes U site, in order to
locate and download public programming. While websites and blogs
associated with individual podcasts can certainly help promote the
awareness of public content on iTunes U or any other podcasting
service, this move by Apple to position iTunes U material directly
into the same space as the rest of the iTunes Music Store content,
will certainly help to increase awareness and impact of all of our
iTunes U programs and material. This is a wonderful opportunity, and
my hope is that we all will take full advantage by producing good,
useful, compelling, and important programming to offer into this
exciting new realm.