Get K-12 Educational Resources Via iTunes U
Jul 2nd, 2008 | By James Lewin | Category: Educational Podcasts, Internet TV, iPods & Portable Media Players, VideoEducators and home-schoolers interested in getting educational multimedia for K-12 students can now find it in Apple’s iTunes U.
While iTunes U originally was created to support the distribution of educational podcasts for colleges & universities, it’s been expanded to support elementary and secondary education as part of an initiative by several state education agencies and the State Education Technology Directors Association (SETDA).
The new iTunes U K-12 section features content from schools and agencies in Arizona, Florida, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Utah. It also includes content from museums and other educational institutions.
The goal of the initiative is to provide state, national and global access to educational content, including curricula, learning materials, news, best practices and other resources.
“This comprehensive collection of quality digital content offers teachers and students a single location to access resources on topics from Florida history to the Navajo language to nano technologies,” said Mary Ann Wolf, executive director of SETDA. “The new K-12 resources on iTunes U address the critical need to engage students through technology-based resources in the core curriculum areas.
Combine podcasting, either through iTunes U or independently, with a device like the Apple TV, and you’ve got a very inexpensive platform for distributing audio, video and other materials to schools for presentation, and to student’s personal media devices for studying.
via The Journal
This is an important development in the delivery of high-quality educational video resources to parents, teachers and children who may be home-schooling or otherwise trying to bolster the learning dynamics for their families. I and my production and creative partner, Teja Arboleda, M.Ed., have been developing an educational series and had been puzzled that a delivery interface like iTunes would not have a portal for the K-12 age group and that the materials available were seemingly only geared more toward education. And as Generation D (digital) becomes parents, they will be looking for content through interfaces such as iTunes as opposed to the now historical video store or even online bookstores. This avenue will take advantage of the deep momentum that has been created through the music download phenomenon and may prove to be an exciting platform for educational services and product in addition to being a viable and valid revenue stream for content providers.
correction:
“seemingly only geared more toward education” should have read “seemingly only geared more toward ENTERTAINMENT”! ….seems to be the bias of my M.Ed., that education-focus….no apologies there!
Ukumbwa
Thanks for your feedback. I’m excited about the potential of iTunes U for kids of all ages, too.
I’d like to see similar development, though, in an open platform for this type of media, one that’s not tied to Apple or any other vendor. It took Apple to make this happen, though.
My name is Carol Keenan and I am the Director of Virtual Education for the North Carolina Association of Independent Schools. We are a non-profit association of independent schools in NC. We currently have 83 member schools, 46 of which belong to our NCAIS Virtual Consortium. This consortium offers online courses for students, blended learning resources, tutoring and academic support, 21st century teacher training, and professional development.
Recently we signed an agreement with Equella whose design team is now in the process of constructing a digital content repository for the North Carolina Association of Independent Schools. Our goal is to fill this repository with digital content that is easily accessible to our NCAIS Virtual member schools.
Our hope is that you will help us import your content into our repository. Although all of your content will continue to reside on your site, repository access will provide our users with information about the content rather than information in the content. This will enable schools to search and identify desired content and will provide additional exposure and marketing for you. Schools will continue to use a link to access your information.
The use of metadata provides controlled and structured descriptions for digital objects. Listed below is a set of fields that describe any digital content to be submitted and accessed through the repository. These fields provide the depth and breadth of information to successfully catalog, locate, and use a learning object in multiple ways.
Providing NCAIS with the information pieces described below in a CSV format will facilitate the bulk import of your information into our repository.
• Title
• Description (textual description of the content of this object)
• Keywords (Enter keywords describing the subject and content of this learning object)
• Subject/Discipline (The broad topic of the resource, often the subject area of a course of study (e.g., physics).
• Learning Resource Type (Specific kind of learning object resource type (e.g. an exam with graph)
• Education Level
• Language (Select the primary language or languages used within this learning object to communicate to the intended user.
• Creation date
• Is the content publicly accessible?
• Copyright
• DRM
Many thanks for your help with this process!
Carol Keenan