On Sep 8, 2009, at 11:09 AM, Aldrich, Dak wrote:
> Greetings:
>
> Some time ago, i heard a rumor that MSU may / may not be in talks with
> Apple over an agreement for a series of iTunes servers, or some system
> that would allow Faculty to share iTunes libraries to other computers
> on campus so that students may do listening exercises and other
> homework involving audio, remotely.
>
> Does anyone know if this was in fact true, or what has or is becoming
> of that?
>
> Being in Music, our faculty have been screaming (yes, some of them
> have gotten rather loud about it) for something like this for...
> well... since i've been here. I am aware of StoreMedia, which is a
> great thing, however, i will be forever showing people how to upload
> and stream media through that, if i even try and open that door.
>
> Thanks for any input anyone might have.
We have been investigating this offering with some folks from the
College of Ed and Engineering. The further along we got into the
feature set available in the current version of iTunesU, the more
questions about it we had.
Prior to Jan 1, 2009, schools who had signed a contract with Apple got
500GB of storage on Apple's servers. Faculty could upload content via
an upload link baked right into the iTunesU class page they were
responsible for. Apple also had a "dropbox" feature for students at
that point.
Post Jan 1, 2009 contract-signers were no longer provided this storage
option (thus eliminating the "one click" upload and dropbox
features). This means that the only way to get content into iTunesU
is by linking an RSS feed in the course page (as a "group"). We have
solutions which provide the ability to host content and generate RSS
feeds (Storemedia + streaming.msu.edu) already. The question that
we've been struggling with is: what value then, does iTunesU then
provide for us?
./mk
--
Matt Kolb <[log in to unmask]>
Assistant Director
Academic Technology Services
Michigan State University
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