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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