iTunes, Podcasting & Teaching … We’ll See

I wasn’t even going to bother with this … seems like forever ago that it hit the press, but Steve unleashed a little tidbit about native podcasting support in the next version of iTunes. That’s a nice step forward … here are a couple of pointers to some stories about it all.

I guess I expected this given all the smiles and winks I’d been given the last six months or so when talking with my friends from Apple about iTunes. What was really nice to see was the statement about adding upload functionality to the service. Downloading podcasts is a nice little feature, but the upload and share opportunity is what unlocks the important doors. When you consider iTunes is a free, cross platform solution you can see how much impact it could have on our classrooms. I’ve seen iTunes as a powerful content management solution for some time and the fact that Apple has continued to quietly add features just reinforces that (think pdf and video support) it is moving more in that direction.

I was linking into the iTMS from my Edison Services Syllabus during the Fall semester to point students to audio books I had listed to and music I was trying to turn them on to. This takes it a step further … if I understand it correctly we can all be stars in the iTMS … but that’s a big if … I am holding out to actually see these upload capabilities, but if they are there we’ll all be talking about that quite a bit more. Think how cool it’ll be to put your own podcasts into the store, author iMixes that has your stuff and a whole boatload of real stuff — audio books, songs, and other podcasts. A single click from my syllabus and students have an entire lecture series ready to go. The possibilities could be endless. I’m really looking forward to testing this out … does anyone think it’ll actually work this way? All I know is that I teach this Summer, this Fall, & this Spring so I’ll be pushing the limits of this stuff!

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