There are certain things you hear in your life that stick with you. For me, one of the great life changers was hearing the great Homer Simpson say: “I am so smart, S-M-R-T, I mean S-M-A-R-T.”
Ok, maybe that was a ridiculous quote, but I know the key to growing and improving my mind is to learn. With this knowledge in hand (see what I did there?), I signed up for a robotics course at Stanford, ‘Physics III’ at MIT and ‘Roy’s writing tools’ at Poynter.
No, I’m not made of money, and I don’t have a time machine, but I do have an iTunes account and an iPod touch, so I downloaded iTunes U.
iTunes U is a free app that gives you access to over 500,000 free lectures, videos, books and other resources, all from the world’s leading educational institutes. As you can see from my selections, course topics cover seemingly everything, and the app contains course materials, books and presentations. If you’re an iPad user you can even download iBooks textbooks from within iTunes U.
Educators are provided with tools to create an e-delivery platform of their course. This means that they can curate every aspect of the course, from lectures, to notes, to homework assignments. As a student of iTunes U, you will then be able to do course assignments, take notes, access course materials, all without feeling guilty for waking up 5 minutes before you were supposed to be in class. (Ahem. Sorry to my physics prof for that one.)
And while there are no Canadian universities in the library yet, I’m excited to see how teachers will use this new platform to deliver courses to students of all ages all over the world. Imagine being able to take a course on the Canadian history from a Canadian University for free from the other side of the globe. This is the kind of stuff that makes me super excited about the future of technology.
Oh, I have to go, my lecture on Ecosystems is about to start!
App details:
iTunes U is available for free and will run on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 5 or later.
You will need an iTunes store account, iTunes 10.5.3 or later , and of course, as with all online content, the selection of courses, collections, and availability of content linked from within a course may vary by country.
If you want more info on iTunes U directly from Apple, you can go to their help guide here.
Happy learning!
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